Little Village Magazine - Issue 132 - May 1-15, 2013

Little Village | Iowa City's New & Culture Magazine

MUSIC | ARTS | CULTURE | COMMUNITY | CALENDAR
INSIDE
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BUILDING A
DREAM paGE 8
ART FROM THE
TRENCHES paGE 14
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MAY 1-15 2013
PORNSTARS
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2 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
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CONTENTS | ISSUE AUTHOR
132
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Volume 12 | Issue 132
4 UR Here
Wonder Lust
20 Entertainment
Show me the crazy!
5
Crafty
A Personal Touch
22 Art City
MFA Highlights
6
On the Table
Going (Com)postal
24 Talking Movies
Selling a Revolution.
May 1-15 2013
PUBLISHER | Matt Steele
Publisher@LittleVillageMag.com
MANAGING EDITOR | Kate Conlow
Editor@LittleVillageMag.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Drew Bulman, Stephanie Catlett,
Amber Neville, Megan Ranegar
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Cecil Adams, Raquel Baker, Jill
Bodach, Pat Brown, Thomas Dean,
Russell Jaffe, A.C. Hawley, Carmen
Machado, Kembrew McLeod,
Brian Prugh, Megan Ranegar, Jared
Rogness, John C. Schlotfelt, Jorie
Slodki, Warren Sprouse, Dr. Star, Roland
Sweet, Casey Wagner, Kent Williams
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
Bill Adams, James Davies, Joshua
Distraction, Tonya Kehoe-Anderson,
Jay Geisen, John Richard
DESIGN
Andrew Desforges, Matt Steele
Article It
Title
Read
7 12 oz Curls
Running Rampant
8 Community
Dadvocacy Central
12 Prairie Pop
Don't just stand there.
14 Art City
Parking Lot Party
16 N.S.F.W.
Rolling in the Hay
17 Screenshot
Building Blocks
26 Calendar
Critics Choice: Live Music and
Theatre Events
32 Straight Dope
Take your shots first.
33 News Quirks
I Scream, You Scream
34 Local Albums
Finals Soundtrack
35 Astrology
The Stars Over Iowa City
Illustrations
Jared Rogness
Little Village Live
Alex Persels, William Ford
Live@LittleVillageMag.com
distribution manager | Austin Morford
Distro@LittleVillageMag.com
Jessica Carbino (CR/UI Campus),
Charles Hoffman (Des Moines)
ARCHIVE
Jessica Carbino, Melody Dworak
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NEXT ISSUE | May. 15, 2013
On the cover: Acrylic on canvas
by JoAnn Larpenter-Sinclair
Proudly
Creating In
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
3
UR Here
THOMAS DEAN
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basil seedlings and young tomato plants in our
backyard gardens, and within days they reach
for the sky and then bring forth food for us
to eat. In the prairie remnants or restorations
we visit at Iowa City’s Mormon Handcart Park
in Iowa City, Johnson County’s Kent Park or
West Branch’s Hoover Presidential Library
and Museum, big bluestem that has been
emerging from the rich topsoil for years and
years breaks ground and grows to nine-foottall splendor within weeks.
The sense of wonder can be dark as well.
We marvel at the miracle of bluestem, but
its magic is made both precious and tragic
when we remember that 99.9 percent of
the native prairie in Iowa has disappeared.
Within 70 or so years, humans completely
extracted a fully functioning ecosystem and
replaced it with something else: domestic
agriculture. That is probably an unmatched
feat in human history, though it has had dire
ecological consequences. It is still wondrous, though in the blackest of ways.
<<< MR. WONDERFUL
Neil deGrasse Tyson illustrates a point during his
lecture at the University of Iowa on April 15.
Photo by Bill Adams
W
hen astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke to a capacity crowd at The University
of Iowa in April, he said that
through his teaching of the marvels of the
universe he tries “to reignite some sense of
wonder.” He went on to say that if you’re not
4
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
wondering “you’re not fully embracing all that
it is to be alive. Because humans wonder.”
I could not agree more. Yet the sense of
wonder is inherent not just in the far reaches
of galaxies, cloud nebulae or asteroids that
may buzz about our own planet; It need not
even be sought in the mysterious permafrost
of Antarctica, the dark depths of the Mariana
Trench or the cloudy heights of Machu Picchu.
Equally spectacular sources of wonder await
our discovery within our home place, ready
to amaze and ignite imagination whenever we
are open to seeking them.
The greatest sense of wonder possible
comes through the miracle of life. And the
miracle of life is everywhere. We live amidst
some of the richest land in the world, a wonder in and of itself. We plant spinach seeds,
Tapping into the remarkable history on the
very ground we walk every day can evoke
wonder if you let it. Within the limestone walls
of our community’s historical and cultural centerpiece, the Old Capitol, the very state we live
in was created. On the Old Capitol grounds,
the community gathered to mourn Abraham
Lincoln’s assassination, to protest the Vietnam
War and to hold a candlelight vigil for the victims of the Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004.
The shadows of profound moments of history
and heritage can flicker into our imaginations
right here at home.
You can literally touch history, too. Feel
that limestone of the Old Capitol outer walls.
It was hand-quarried over 170 years ago from
along the Iowa River north of Iowa City. It
is Devonian limestone, bedrock from when
Iowa was a warm inland sea 400 million years
ago. Fantastical giant armored fish called arthrodires, superpredators up to 30 feet long,
swam in those waters amidst feathery crinoids
and shelled brachiopods. A visit to the unique
Devonian Fossil Gorge at Coralville Lake,
legacy of the 1993 and 2008 floods, will literally put your imagination in touch with our
prehistory that dates to long before dinosaurs
even roamed the planet.
The wonder of human achievement sparkles around us constantly. The marvels of
UR HERE >> cont. on page 11
Megan ranegar
Crafty
Photos by Tonya Kehoe-Anderson
P
hilip Hensher’s book The Missing
Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting
discusses the vanishing act of the
written word plays in our world today. The widely reviewed book claims that
the diminishing use of handwriting is in turn
diminishing our humanity. It seems Hensher
may take his scribbling a little too
seriously.
But, as I sit here texting my
mom, typing my grocery list into
my iPhone and clicking away at
my keyboard, I begin to wonder if
Hensher’s got a point. I can type 200
words in the blink of an eye, but I’ve forgotten how to write most letters in cursive. While
gaining all of this new technology, are we losing something meaningful? Is handwriting really becoming a lost art?
Local artist and maker Heather Atkinson
is keeping the DIY dream alive. Atkinson’s
handwriting has become a part of her—and
most likely, your—day-to-day life. She creates handmade signs and menus for local
shops and eateries, including Artifacts, Home
Ec. Workshop, Leaf Kitchen, The Paper Nest,
Revival and RSVP. Her skillfully scrolled signage appeals to business owners and patrons
alike. “The feel of our restaurant is kind of
personal,” says Harriet Woodford, owner of
Leaf Kitchen. “Everything is different, and
that’s kind of our style. Having handmade
signs is part of what we do. You can’t create
what Heather does on a computer.”
“I feel like a lot of people are going back
to handmade and smaller scale businesses and
ideas,” says Margaret Roberts of Artifacts. “It
just goes along with buying local, doing things
the old fashioned way.” Here, Atkinson shares
her secrets when it comes to putting pen to
paper.
Part of “readopting” writing involves
changing our habits. Flex your writing muscles
by simply shifting your focus from your keyboard to a pen and paper. “Have you noticed
people holding writing utensils like sporks?”
says Atkinson. “Writing may not be a lost art
yet, but it is definitely endangered. You can’t
write neatly with your texting thumb!”
Handwriting takes more time, effort and
creativity than letting your computer do the
dirty work. So, why DIY? “Seeing something
done by hand has an increasing attraction for
people,” says Atkinson. “It’s a lost connection,
a longing for that special touch of uniqueness
you just cannot get with technology. It carries
warmth and even the memory of
human contact. It shows that you
dedicated time to create something
special and unique.”
Okay, you’re all in—you want
to get crafty with cursive. Atkinson
suggests mixing equal parts ink
and inspiration to create your own handwritten projects. “I try and add some special flair
to each set of signs. For example, on a few recent projects, I tea-dyed the paper prior to use.
Oftentimes, I will do some research or look for
inspiration in my book collection, magazines,
online–-everywhere, really. Times can vary
greatly depending on the amount of detail, and
often the most time is spent in the inspiration
and research phase.”
Megan Ranegar is wondering where all of her
gel pens from 1997 have gone.
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May 1-15 2013 | Little
Village
On the Table
W
JILL BODACH
ith more and more local programs and educational initiatives popping up, composting
is clearly taking a larger role in
Iowa City’s waste infrastructure.
Composting, by definition, is the controlled
breakdown of biodegradable yard and kitchen
waste. As organic matter decomposes, nutrients are converted into usable forms that can
then be absorbed by roots. According to Kristi
Cooper, a Family Life Specialist with Iowa
State University’s Linn County Extension
Office who specializes in sustainable living
practices, interest in composting is at an alltime high.
“Most people I talk to are interested in
learning about composting,” Cooper said.
“People are really concerned about the environment and the waste we produce and want
to learn what they can do about it.”
Cooper has had an outdoor compost pile
at her home for many years. Four years ago
she decided to try indoor composting. It was
so successful that Cooper set up a composting
bin at her Linn County office, and in just one
year the office diverted 300 gallons of food
waste by collecting lunch scraps.
Local organizations that have launched
composting efforts include New Pioneer Food
Co-op, Bluebird Diner, Regina High School,
6
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
Elizabeth Tate Alternative High School,
Hiawatha Elementary School and West High
School. All have incorporated some level of
composting, whether it’s just diverting food
waste from landfills or also converting it to
compost. Residents of several Iowa City neighborhoods have also started composting cooperatives where one residence hosts the compost
pile and other residents contribute to it.
It’s true that many Iowa City residents are
putting a concerted effort towards composting, but before trash talking other communities for their lack of composting efforts, Scott
Koepke has some other statistics. Koepke is
the Education Outreach Coordinator for New
Pioneer Food Co-op’s Soilmates program. He
can often be found in classrooms teaching
children about the value of composting. Not
surprisingly, Koepke serves as his neighborhood composter, and he often finds donated
buckets of food on his porch.
“Iowa City is actually behind the curve,”
Koepke said. “And I say that to be motivational, not critical.”
Cities like Portland, Oregon have really
embraced urban composting programs. Since
October 2011, the city provided all residences
with weekly curbside compost collection. A
year into the new curbside collection system,
38 percent less residential waste was headed
to the landfill and three times more yard debris
and food scraps were turned into compost, according to the City’s website.
In Manhattan, the Lower East Side Ecology
Center’s Community Compost Program
has offered dropoff locations for food waste
since 1990. In the Bay Area, the cities of San
Francisco and Oakland have adopted zerowaste initiatives that emphasize a closed-loop
system of production and consumption, promoting the best use of materials and eliminating waste and pollution, moving incrementally
toward the goal of producing no waste at all.
“[In Iowa City] the momentum has really
blossomed, but there is still a lot that we could
do to take it to the next level,” Koepke said.
Step 1: Education
The first step in taking Iowa City’s composting to the next level. The first is educating people. The first lesson: It’s not garbage;
it’s compost. According to Koepke, half of
what currently goes into the Iowa City landfill could be composted. Organics, paper and
cardboard account for 52.9 percent of the Iowa
City Landfill.
“That’s a really staggering statistic,” he
said. “And [the waste] is not doing anything
there except creating methane.”
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas—the
second most prevalent greenhouse gas emitted in the United States from human activities,
according to the Environmental Protection
Agency—and one of the greatest contributors
to global warming.
Along these same lines is the misconception that compost piles “stink.” They don’t, if
done correctly by keeping a ratio of greens to
browns. Greens are the food products (i.e. fruit
peels, vegetable trimmings, coffee grounds
and tea leaves) that contribute nitrogen to the
soil. Combined, greens should only account for
30 percent of what is in the compost pile. The
rest should be browns (i.e. shredded newspaper, leaves, paper towels and wrapping paper
rolls), which contribute carbon. Items such as
meat, fish, milk products, eggs, oils, walnuts
and heavily coated paper such as magazines
cannot go into backyard urban compost piles
because they attract maggots.
The second lesson: It’s not dirt; it’s soil.
COMPOST
When Cooper talks about the nutrient-rich
soil produced by her worms she gets giddy
with excitement.
“It is the perfect fertilizer,” she said. “It’s
like liquid gold.”
Soil, at least that which can sustain plant,
vegetable and fruit growth, is not something
people frequently think of conserving, but
Koepke says it should be.
“[Soil] is really a finite resource that we
take for granted, and I want people to start to
respect it more,” Koepke said. “We pollute
it, we erode it, and that’s just not smart in the
long term. It’s the basis on which our food and
our plants are linked.”
Step 2: Funding
The second step towards increasing composting programs is the financial component.
For those who don’t choose to purchase a
composting bin, composting at home can be
completely free. Wriggler worms—they expedite the process, but are not necessary—are
another cost, but again, it is possible to obtain
these without spending money (Cooper says
she is happy to share hers once they reproduce.)
Incorporating composting programs in
schools or throughout the county could be
costly, but the costs are not formidable or
prohibitive, Koepke said. The most expensive
component could be hauling the food scraps
and compostable waste to compost facilities.
Currently, only Johnson County Refuse provides this hauling service.
Purchasing a shredder is also necessary in
order to dehydrate all of the waste—a vital
part of reducing the plague of urban composting: maggots.
Ideally, as a long-term goal, Koepke said
he’d like Iowa City to have a comprehensive
system to divert food waste from businesses
(especially restaurants and grocery stores) to
a composting facility. In the short term, he’d
like to see more neighborhoods and individual
homes adopt their own composting programs.
Cooper thinks composting will continue
to gain momentum as more and more people
learn about its benefits.
“The lesson of composting is that nothing is
wasted because everything can be transformed
into something else,” Cooper said.
Casey Wagner
The Hops
New Belgium Brewing - Ft. Collins, Colorado
Rampant IPA
BREW OF THE MONTH: MAY
W
ith supplies of spring’s seasonal brews
dwindling, I’ve decided to suggest a
spring-ish beer that is not only brewed
year-round, but also offers a level of
hop bitterness that exceeds anything else I have recommended: Rampant IPA, brewed by New Belgium
Brewing.
As an Imperial IPA, Rampant is not one of those
flavorful, springtime camping IPAs with lots of citrus
and tropical fruit. Rampant offers hints of that, but it is
brewed to be bitter and boozy, and that is exactly what
it is. It is not the most extreme version of the style, but
it is a good value for the style.
Pour into a tulip or oversized wine glass. The beer
is clear with a light copper color. Two fingers of dense, eggshell-colored head will leave a
rocky cap, a webwork of foam along the glass and will eventually settle to a skim and bubbly
ring around the edge for the rest of the pint. The smell offers a balance between floral hops,
citrus and tropical fruit. Pine is prominent at first, but is tempered by grapefruit, orange, apple,
tangerine and mango as the beer warms. As the beer becomes warmer, it offers a sticky-sweet
aroma that is tinged with citrus, mango and perhaps peach. Though it may just be the pine
resin, I think there is a touch of catty pungency.
The flavor offers a bold bitterness that slowly works on the taste buds and does not reach its
peak until the aftertaste. Though not completely masked, the alcohol keeps a low profile. The
flavors are pretty tame: mostly floral hops and pine, with sharp lemon zest. Hints of grapefruit
and mango peek through, but the beer needs to warm considerably before they are noticeable.
After that point, the bitterness is countered by pale malts and a light, candy caramel flavor.
SERVING TEMPERATURE: 50ºF or a little warmer
Alcohol content: 8.5 percent ABV
Food Pairings: BeerAdvocate recommends barbecue; peppery, sharp and pungent
cheeses; and grilled meat.
Where to buy: Rampant is available at most area beer retailers.
Price: $9 per six-pack
Casey Wagner lives in Iowa City.
Jill Bodach is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’
Workshop. She is an adjunct professor of
English at Kirkwood Community College.
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
7
Community
RAQUEL BAKER
I
n 2006, Frederick Newell moved from
Chicago to attend the University of Iowa.
He was 18 years old and had a six-monthold baby. As a single dad, he found little
support—like access to affordable daycare—in
his new city, and remembers bringing his son to
class with him. He also found a severe lack of
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Inspired by his guiding question, in May 2012,
Newell founded the Dream Center in a house
across from Grant Wood Elementary School. The
Dream Center’s core mission is to strengthen families by mentoring fathers and young men. With
services such as the Fatherhood Academy, Dads
Making a Difference and the Youth Leadership
Photo by John Richard
community between other fathers. He earned a
social work degree in four years while raising
his son with little social support. This combined
with his professional experience working in a
social service culture that prioritizes the needs
of women and children while often failing to
foster father involvement sparked the beginnings of a somewhat dangerous idea: What if
it’s the social infrastructure for fathers, and not
the fathers themselves, that is the problem?
Academy, the Center is a budding one-stop shop
where fathers and families are connected to educational advocacy, support groups, therapy, social
services and spiritual resources.
A Dangerous Idea
In October 2012, Newell met Luke Benson,
who was inspired by the work Newell was doing
with young men and fathers in the community. At
the time, Benson was teaching introductory writing courses at Kirkwood. That semester Benson
had his students read In Defense of Dangerous
Ideas, an essay by Steven Pinker that poses the
value of considering ‘dangerous ideas’—ideas
that can be unpleasant to think about because
they challenge the social order or a society’s
most profound convictions about itself. When
seven of his nine students of color failed to turn
in a major paper assignment, Benson returned to
the text he had assigned to his students and asked
himself a dangerous question: “Is cultural bias
operating in my classroom?”
Benson, a whiteboy who grew up on a farm
in a 400-person town in northwest Iowa, says,
“I thought I understood race.” Yet faced with a
glaring fact—that all of his white students but
only two of his minority students were passing
his course—Benson says, “I underestimated
how real systemic issues are. I underestimated
my privilege.”
Though from different backgrounds, Newell
and Benson, who serves as the program director of the Dream Center’s Learning Center,
base their work together on mutual respect
and a willingness to explore dangerous ideas.
Teaching in Cedar Rapids and trying to get
Kirkwood to fund an intensive summer program for students on academic probation led
Benson to the conclusion that equity in education can only be achieved, racial and economic
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the Dream center
divides can only be bridged and schools can
only be transformed through grassroots educational reform, community activism and
involvement in advocacy and mentorship.
“Education is broken,” saidBenson, “As a
community, change must come from us.”
Growing a Dream
Together, Newell and Benson are working to
grow the Dream Center through a communitybased fundraising initiative they call Dollar a
Day (DAD). With access to the greater corridor
area, and the potential to reach donors throughout the rest of Iowa, Benson believes getting
1,000 people to commit to donating one dollar
a day is possible and will create a stable funding
base for salaries and programming.
The Inspireads program is another growth
initiative that, in partnership with Prairie
Lights and the National Council of Teachers
of English, calls for individuals to write a personal inscription inside a book that inspired
them and donate it to create a library at the
Dream Center.
Newell's vision for the growth of the Dream
Center extends beyond Iowa City, providing
support groups and advocacy throughout the
state in less than five years.
But, in order for the Dream Center to succeed in reaching its advocacy goals within Iowa
City, Newell says it may mean first crossing the
boundaries of the greater community’s comfort
zones and engaging more people in conversations about dangerous ideas. Newell says that
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May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
9
THE DREAM CENTER
he can't advocate for fathers and young men,
parents and students, without being vocal about
the racial divide in Iowa City, the differential access to resources that effect the greater community and, most importantly, the lack of motivation from Iowa Citians to develop an inclusive
community in its schools, local governing bodies and neighborhoods. Newell says, “We need
community support to be able to speak against
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entrenched institutional power ... I’m just struck
by how little it would take to make a big difference and how much people fight change.” The
effects of these issues contribute to what Benson
describes as perhaps the most dangerous idea of
all, “learning to recognize and reconcile the fact
that there are really two Iowa Citys.”
While Newell and Benson acknowledge
that change can be slow, they know they
are already making an impact through the
Center’s work with young people. Charles
Johnson, a 14-year-old South East Junior High
student, says he appreciates the tutoring and
loves the Dream Team basketball program. He
says, “Playing [basketball] is a big help. A lot
of people from school play. You have to have
a 3.0 GPA to be on the team.”
Johnson also participates in The Chosen
Generation, a youth development program that
offers mentoring, volunteer activities and a
critical discussions of issues that affect the lives
and potentials of the next generation of grown
ups. Johnson remembers one moment during a
poignant discussion that addressed the politics
of law enforcement and incarceration, as well
as the disparity between the black population
living in Iowa City and the City’s incarcerated
black population. As the conversation shifted to
the economics of filling jail cells and the profits made by a network of interests—from construction companies to businesses that provide
services such as healthcare, food or clothing—
he looked around, counted all his peers in TCG
and thought, that’d be like a million dollars of
profit lost if all of us in this room stay out of jail.
With the Dream Center, Newell and Benson
want to foster those kinds of moments of selfrealization—moments of dream formation—by
providing a space where youth can share ideas
and experiences with engaged adults. They hope
the Dream Center will grow to become an institution that helps Iowa City have the courage to
explore and confront dangerous ideas, fosters
cross-racial community building and continues
to work toward building social and political
structures that benefit ALL Iowa Citians.
Raquel Baker is a graduate student at the
University of Iowa, studying Postcolonial
Studies and African Literatures in English.
PART 8 of 12 | LittleVillageMag.com/greenstreet
10 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
IRVING B. WEBER DAYS
>> UR HERE cont. from page 4
democracy, when a society cooperatively
agrees to make decisions for itself—whether
they’re about new jails, school board members or US presidents—recur regularly. Our
friends, neighbors, loved ones and guests are
constantly writing incredible books and poems, making gorgeous music, building impressive social and cultural organizations,
plumbing the mysteries of the human genome
and, yes, even probing the farthest reaches of
dark outer space.
One person who never lost that sense of
wonder about the paths he walked every day
throughout his entire life was Iowa Citian
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Irving Weber, memorialized in the statue at
the corner of Iowa Avenue and Linn Street.
Living his entire 97 years in his home community, Weber was so fascinated by the world
he grew up in and lived in day by day that he
could not help telling stories about the marvels
of our town in newspaper columns, bus tours,
community access television presentations
and much more. Whether relating the heyday
of Whetstone’s Drugs (the place to go for a
Friday night malt), the mystery of Oakland
Cemetery’s Black Angel or the spectacle of
the coming circus marching down Clinton
Street, Irving Weber exemplified a lifelong enthusiasm for our community that can only be
called wonder.
Although Irving Weber has not been with
us in body for 16 years now, he remains with
us in spirit. Each May, our community celebrates the wonders of the local with Weber
Days, and I hope you will reignite your sense
of local wonder by attending some events.
Check out the websites of the Iowa City Public
Library (www.icpl.org) and the Johnson
County Heritage Society (www.jchsiowa.org/)
throughout the month.
Wonder certainly can be in the eye of the
beholder. And our eyes see best what is closest to us.
Thomas Dean wonders if he will ever be able
to learn about and experience all the marvels
of our community.
Our ideal candidate would be somebody who is comfortable
starting out from an in-the-trenches, all-hands-on-deck
position, but eventually will be able to take ownership of the
overall success of testing of all our products.
We’d also like to see 3+ years of Software
Engineering or QA experience, a basic
knowledge and understanding of the
software development process, motivation,
self-initiative and a desire to work in an
agile environment where everyone matters.
To apply or for more information:
www.metacommunications.com/qa_engineer
MetaCommunications
1210 S. Gilbert Street • Iowa City, IA 52240
www.metacommunications.com
/MetaCommunications •
/MetaComm
A few of our customers:
BonTon • Merck • Crate & Barrel • Texas Roadhouse • Yamaha
National Geographic • AllState • TJX • Northrop Grumman
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
11
Prairie Pop
KeMBREW McLeod
[Editor’s Note: Kembrew McLeod’s two-yearold son, Alasdair, is sitting in for our regular
Prairie Pop columnist this issue. Like many
adult music critics, he likes to coin genre
names, and lately Alasdair has been obsessed
with “Jump Music.” When it comes to this
musical style, his tastes veer more towards
hip-hop and r&b-inflected dance pop—likely
because they meet the functional requirement
of inspiring him to jump up and down. The
following is an exact transcript of Alasdair’s
comments on Jump Music.]
I
t was Kris Kross’s number one hit
“Jump” that first made me a fan of Jump
Music, a genre that makes all other styles
sound wiggity-wiggity-wiggity wack.
One highlight is the song’s economical sampling of “I Want You Back,” in which teen producer Jermaine Dupri looped just three notes
from that classic Jackson 5 song. I also like
the repetitive minimalism of the stage names
adopted by this kid-rap duo: Mac Daddy and
Daddy Mac.
"Jump Around" by House of Pain—or as I
like to call them, “House of the Pain,” which
is a way better band name—is the second best
Jump Song ever. Ever! Aside from the chorus,
“Jump up, jump up, and get down,” my favorite line is, “I got more rhymes than cops at a
Dunkin’ Donuts shop.” Because, well, I like
donuts very much. Very very much! However,
I hate the misogyny in the line, “I’ll serve your
ass like John McEnroe/If your girl steps to me
I’m slapping your ho.” That’s not right, even
if he was trying to be funny. We all came from
12 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
our mommies, so we have to treat women with
respect.
I don’t fully get the lyrical content of
Destiny Child’s “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” (“it’s
11:30 and the club is jumpin’ jumpin’”). I’m
not old enough to get into clubs, and I can’t
stay up late, but I do like the beat. I feel the
same about R. Kelly’s “Party Jumpin’,” which
goes, “Let’s take some shots/Let’s celebrate
… Let’s get this party jumpin’!” He glorifies
drinking, which I don’t understand. I like to
drink from my sippy cup as much as the next
guy, but there’s no reason to be excessive
about it—especially if it means getting your
diaper changed more often.
“Jump ‘n Shout” by Basement Jaxx is a
straight up banger. Aside from Kris Kross’s
and House of Pain’s contributions to the
jump music canon, this song makes me want
to jump around the most. Its frenetic, almost
avant-garde rhythms are super, and the song’s
dancehall-style vocals remind me of Major
Lazer’s totally fist-bumpin-n-pumpin’ “Jump
Up.” LCD Soundsystem’s cover of “Jump
Into the Fire” is the most rock-oriented song
on this list, but its Krautrock-meets-Disco beat
nevertheless made me poop my pants the first
time I heard it.
I also really really liked Sir Mix-A-Lot’s
“Jump On it,” in part because I love learning
and because it dropped some real geographic
knowledge on my tush. The song is about how
Sir Mix-A-Lot likes to party in different cities, and it begins with the MC name-checking
Dallas, Austin and other places in Texas before moving on to different regions throughout
JUMP TUNES
the country. (“What’s up Little Rock, what’s
up?/Little Rock, jump on it! Jump on it! …
What’s up Tacoma, what’s up?”)
Dad will only let me listen to the censored
version of Lil’ Kim’s “The Jump Off,” even
though it is one of the least racy songs recorded by this foulmouthed lady rapper. I’m
less turned off by the swear words than by her
rampant celebration of consumerism in the
song’s chorus (“This is for my peeps with the
Bentleys, the Hummers, the Benz/Escalades,
23-inch rims”). Nevertheless, the Timbaland
beats rock my little world!
For my last pick, I’m going waaaaay back
in the day with the Pointer Sisters’ “Jump (For
My Love)”—a 1984 song that is so old school
it’s almost preschool! I mean, what did they
have to do to listen to music back then, rub
stones together? I don’t think I could live in
a world without touch screens and instant access to streaming music. If I want to hear a
very specific Jump Song, I WANNA HEAR IT
NOW!
Lil Alasdair is the only music critic who can
rock overalls with a doggie on the front and
still be cool.
[Admittedly, that wasn’t an exact transcript of what Alasdair said, but he actually did select the following songs in this
Jump Music Top Ten list. In the process of
compiling it, he vetoed many well known
tracks—such as Van Halen’s “Jump” (it
was “boring,” Alasdair insisted, citing
its slow tempo), and the Rolling Stones’
“Jumping Jack Flash” (“this is NOT Jump
Music,” he flatly stated). Oh, and don’t get
him started on Harry Belafonte’s “Jump In
the Line” or Dave Brubeck’s “Everybody’s
Jumpin’,” which he dismissed out of hand
because apparently calypso and jazz aren’t
jumpy enough.]
Download Alasdair’s Jump Music Top
Ten at littlevillagemag.com/jumpmusic
1. Kris Kross “Jump”
2. House of Pain “Jump Around”
3. Destiny’s Child “Jumpin’ Jumpin’”
4. R. Kelly “Party Jumpin’”
5. Basement Jaxx “Jump ‘n Shout”
6. LCD Soundsystem “Jump Into the Fire”
7. Major Lazer “Jump Up”
8. Sir Mix-A-Lot “Jump On It”
9. Lil’ Kim “The Jump Off”
10. The Pointer Sisters “Jump (For My Love)”
Photos by Tonya Kehoe-Anderson
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
13
Art City
RUSSELL JAFFE
www.LittleVillageMag.com
A BEAT OF THEIR OWN
All Music All Art Hosts Quatro de Mayo Celebration
A
rt wears many faces; sometimes
you’ll remove art’s mask and surprise, there’s another mask underneath. It can be hard to tell where
art starts and stops. There’s an art to broken
pianos, to rainy day gravel back lots and, of
course, to communities.
creation meets conception, where massive collections of tools hang confidently overlooking
drafting tables piled high with fliers and ideas
for projects. And while the sheer amount of
stuff in the gallery space might drive a minimalist mad, Downing sees a comfort in the
aesthetic of the gallery and store.
Photos by James Davies
Warming psychedelic jazz music plays
from a dusty boombox on a paint-splattered
shelf in a workroom filled with pianos and
warehouse-high ceilings. Downing puffs a
cigarette, the smoke reaching around from
under his Hawkeyes cap like monster fingers
through the sewer grating of American movie
posters. He gestures with hands ruddy like
someone who’s tuned a lot of things.
Currently, he’s designing a flier for AMAA’s
next event: A Quatro De Mayo celebration.
“You like that? Most of the Mexicans I know
think it’s funny too,” Downing says with a
smiling shrug. It happens May 4 at 8:00 p.m.,
a Saturday night. Nearly a dozen artists will
be there alongside half a dozen bands in
the lot next to the store. “What we do is we
set up tents and lights and chairs and tables
outdoors, out in the parking lot, and we’ve
been lucky with the weather so far. See, I
rent a little fence and block off the whole
parking lot.”
Downing’s an earnest, hard working guy,
a perfect representation of the wilderness
art community surrounding the domesticated clearing that is the central downtown region with its quick University accessibility.
Party in the
trenches
All Music All Art (1016 Gilbert
Ct.) | May 4 | 8:00 p.m.
$5 (donation)
Enter All Music All Art (AMAA), an offthe-beaten path gallery and music store tucked
around the corner from a hair salon at 1016
Gilbert Ct., that walks to the beat of it’s
own drum (and piano, guitar, etc.), running
concerts and art showcases for local artist
for the last two and a half years. It’s run by
E.G. Madison and my host on this visit, M.F.
Downing. Downing is an eccentric and stoic
craftsman asteroid perpetually in Iowa City’s
art orbit, at least for the last few years.
“We buy and sell new and used musical
instruments and we specialize in restoring
them,” Downing says in a voice equal parts
molasses and ash. “If I had $10,000, right now,
I’d spend it all on instruments to restore.”
Paintings and glossy photographs hang next
to shelves of rusty tools, glossy acoustic guitars and all manner of silent pianos. The rooms
of AMAA form a stockhouse bunker where
14 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
“There’s no madness,” he says. “We
restore musical instruments. People pay
me to restore pianos.
I’ve been in the restoration business for
over 35 years, all
over—the East Coast,
the West Coast—but
I’ve been making art since I was a little kid ...
people need to get out of their shells and hunt
[art] down, experience it a little more, instead
of doing the same things over and over again.”
Downing sips a Budweiser as he leads me
through a thin labyrinth of hanging artwork
and standing musical equipment. “We don’t
have a half a million dollar budget. We’re on
a real shoestring … All the art here is for sale,
and it’s all from local artists. These are the artists from this upcoming show alone.”
He smirks, “We’re hoping to get under the skin
of Iowa City, get them away from the pretentious stores downtown, and they can see some
real art, art that’s affordable.”
And for only $5, AMAA offers quite the
affordable celebration that includes wine,
cheese and Mexican food. “[The $5 donation]
doesn’t cover the cost,” Downing explains.
“It never does, so it helps but doesn’t go too
far. If we get, say, 200 people, though, we’d
throw money to the musicians, buy some of
ALL MUSIC ALL ART
the art … I’ve been saving up to buy some of
their work myself … A good friend of mine
is a wine expert and wholesale wine dealer;
he provides the wine and talks to people
about it. He actually teaches the wine class at
Kirkwood (through the Continuing Ed Dept).
My partner teaches guitar, drums and he’s
working on piano. He’s a drummer for a lot of
different bands ... he’ll be playing with James
Kennedy and Friends at the show.”
All Music All Art is a passion project where
musicians and artists peddle their wares and
services. And they’re always seeking new
artists and musicians to showcase for future
shows. “I plan to do (events) two, three times
a year for the rest of forever,” said Downing.
And if his shoestring budget gets untied?
“There’s always reincarnation! You gotta
think about the future. You’d be surprised how
quick the future comes.”
And then, after hearing about his passion
for restoring ancient pianos in the room of
instruments, I ask him, "Why the art?" He answers as only a true art spirit might, starting
with laughter. “I don’t understand the question,” he says with a cool, collected voice like
a long stretch of highway. “It’s obvious. What
do you mean why? There’s no answer to that
question. That’s like asking Michelangelo
‘Why the art? What’s with the art, man?’”
“You know, my dog may have run out the
door,” he continues. But the shaggy black dog
that greeted me with cuddles upon entry is in
the other room resting, staring up at us with
brown eyes like thick wooden screws. “There’s
no question about art, it’s a necessary aspect of
life,” says Downing. “Can you imagine a world
without art and music? Good luck with that.”
He continues: “Iowa City has two faces, you
know? There’s the plastic chichi wannabe cosmopolitan scene and there’s the trenches,” he laughs.
“People are just scratching and clawing through
life, clawing through the trench. Both faces are
fine, except they clash. They don’t come together
like they should. But that’s the way society is anyway. It’s a crazy mixed up world out there, you
can’t be scared to go out and face it.”
More information can be found at allmusicallart.com/amaa/ or by liking All Music All
Art on Facebook.
Russell Jaffe is the editor of Strange Cage and
is a real man doing real things.
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May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
15
N.S.F.W.
CARMEN MACHADO
B
y the time you read this, the first
of May will likely have passed,
but that’s okay because it probably would have been too cold to
fuck outside anyway. But let’s assume that by
the time you read this it is warm enough, and
you’re feeling frisky.
The first of May is a magical day. It marks
Beltane, the pagan fertility festival, and has
been celebrated by poets and musicians alike
as the first day of the year—barring freakishly
freezing Iowa springs, of course—to romp
around with your lover in the tall grasses.
While James Taylor sang subtly about this day
(“It's a rite of spring / A horizontal thing / The sweetest sort of dance / Hidden in among the plants”),
Jonathan Coulton pulls no punches (“Water's not
cold baby dip in your big toe / Maybe I'll see you
in flagrante delicto / Grass below you, sky above
/ Celebrate spring with a crazy little thing called
fucking outside”). Either way, once the ground
has thawed and it is definitely, definitely, for-surethis-time not going to snow again, Iowa City is
your outdoor sexin’ oyster. So whether you need
to bone somewhere where the roommates can’t
hear, you’re looking for something new and adventurous or you just want to have another excuse
to drink during Never Have I Ever, here are some
handy-dandy tips for coming hard and frequently,
all with a gentle breeze tickling your backside and
minimal bad things happening.
Know the laws and risks.
Do not be fooled: Public sex is a risky behavior. First of all, unless you own and are fucking
16 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
www.LittleVillageMag.com
on your own palatial estate, you will often be trespassing, especially if it’s after
hours. There are also laws about public
exposure. Iowa Code §709.9 (indecent exposure) states that if you commit a sex act in
front of a third party, you could be charged with
a misdemeanor.
Will that be how it shakes out if a late-night
dog walker or security guard discovers you
mid-coitus? Not necessarily, but it’s something to think about. Also: While part of the
hotness of public, outdoor sex is the “Ooooh,
we might get caught” factor, don’t try to get
caught. Accidents happen, but your kink is not
It's a rite of spring
A horizontal thing
The sweetest sort of dance
Hidden in among the plants
—James Taylor
everyone else’s kink, and you shouldn’t deliberately try to expose a stranger to your wobbling genitals. (Remember what Taylor sings:
hidden among the plants. Hidden.)
Also, I am not a lawyer. Consult a lawyer if
you’re really worried about all of this.
Pick a good spot.
Iowa City is lousy with good places to fuck in
public. You just gotta choose a place that’s a little
more isolated, and pick late night, early morning
hours where the chances of running into someone are slim. Oakland Cemetery is massive and
has lots of good corners, if the idea of desecrating the resting places of the dead doesn’t give
you pause. Pick the oldest tombstone you can
find, for a more authentic experience. Fuck under the Black Angel if you’re feeling daring (that
she won’t put the curse on your head, or that the
more exposed location won’t get you caught).
Hickory Hill Park is closed between the hours
of 10:30 p.m. and 6 a.m., but if you can get away
with it, there are plenty of pretty spots.
Bring a blanket.
There are few things worse than grass burn
on your knees, ants in your pubic hair or poison
ivy in your groin—you can pay tribute to spring
without having to use ice packs for days. Plus,
you can use a blanket to cover yourselves up
quickly if an intrepid voyeur happens upon you,
or throw it on an aggressive nocturnal mammal
should you need to run away.
Make like campers and
clean up after yourselves,
for fuck’s sake.
There’s nothing wrong with having sex
outdoors, but there is something wrong with
being an asshole. Don’t leave used condoms,
discarded underwear or whatever tangled in
the underbrush or strewn across the grass.
Leave that meadow more beautiful than when
you found it.
Carmen Maria Machado is a fiction writer
and essayist whose work has been featured or
is forthcoming in The American Reader, VICE
Magazine, Five Chapters, Indiana Review,
Best Women's Erotica 2012, The Hairpin, Los
Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review
Daily, and many other publications. She is
a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop
and the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy
Writers' Workshop.
PAT BROWN
I
Screenshot
Late to the BLOCK Party
have a friend who is somewhat obsessed goal (e.g., Mario Bros), or simply increase dif- function in a likewise manner, and, at night,
with a particular writer, but hasn’t read ficulty after every successful completion of a supernatural threats. But there is no goal, and
what is widely considered this author’s task (e.g., Space Invaders), open-world games there is no end to this world: no missions, no
masterpiece, as he’s intentionally saving give more freedom to the user to control his or arbitrary borders.
Before I idealize the game too much, it is
it for a particular moment. After I accidentally her experience of the game and generate a freegenerally assumed that as one spends more
spoiled part of the novel for him this week, I standing universe to explore.
The thing about open-world games is that time in the world of the game, one’s technology
teased him for being the only person I knew
who was so obsessed with a book he’d never their openness is paradoxically—and in some will advance, more areas will be discovered and
read. And then I realized you could probably sense necessarily—a circumscribed one. While excavated, one’s dwellings will increase in size
say the same situation applies to me, only not playing, one runs into arbitrary borders and in- and improve in design. After all, the possibility
to advance technologically
with a book but the video
is programmed into the
game Minecraft.
game. But there’s nothing
Digressive confession:
compelling the user to take
Although for the moment
advantage of this feature,
I am writing a monthly
no rewards but the selfcolumn on video games,
satisfaction one might reI am no expert. Up unceive from the simulacrum
til March of last year,
of a bigger reserve of iron,
the most recent system I
a taller tower, a complex
owned was a Playstation 2;
underground bunker.
my most frequently played
LIVING IN A
And if one does follow
game was NCAA March
DIGITAL WORLD such a goal-oriented path, in
Madness 2004, in which
An untouched Minecraft landsingle-player mode there’s
game I led my hometown
scape waits to be harvested.
ultimately no one to share
Fighting Illini to seven
it with; the serene yet melChampionships in a row,
ancholy score of the game
a carefully constructed al- Screenshot provided by Pat Brown
emphasizes one’s solitude
ternate history to the last
seven seasons of Illinois basketball. And the accessible areas, and “missions” that progress as the only human in an infinite world. The conlast time I had played a game online for an the games’ narratives must be completed in structions of the user represent nothing but the
extended period was probably in the days of order to unlock certain portions of gameplay. manifestation of one’s will upon nature. The
Moreover, such games still have narrative, radically open space of this game thus exposes
Quake II (yes—the ‘90s).
All this is to say that, although I’ve clearly which means, among other things, a goal, prog- goals and progress as cultural notions that depend on a human subject; ironically, of course, it
rediscovered video games, I’ve missed some ress, an end: a closed system.
achieves this effect through comthings. One of these things would
plex coding and hardware that are
seem to be Minecraft, the original
The constructions of the
a direct real-world result of the
version of which came out for the
imposition of human will on the
PC over three years ago. But it’s
user represent nothing but the
world. It generates its openness
only over the last week that I’ve
from a closed system.
gotten obsessed with this game,
manifestation of one’s will
So there is a certain closedwatching videos and homemade
ness in the very foundations of
tutorials, reading articles and
upon nature.
Minecraft, but the game allows
making mental plans for my
To be polemic for a moment, although I very this closed-ness to manifest itself in the game’s
gameplay. I haven’t bought it yet simply because
this game is going to be the end of me. Here, I’d much enjoy narrative in general, and some of blocky, lo-fi graphics. Minecraft doesn’t practhese games in particular, I suspect that the tice illusionism in its imagery or realism in
like to try to explain this obsession.
For the uninitiated (technically, I’m still “heart” of video games lies elsewhere, and I its (lack of) narrative, but it is immersive and,
among you), here is this game—if you can even think I’ve found it in Minecraft. This game has perhaps even critical. I think this is why I’ve
call it a game—that has reached massive popu- no goal, notions of progress have to stem from become so obsessed with it.
larity despite the fect that it presents no goals, the user him- or herself, it by definition does not
direction or victory conditions. Like a number end. It is open. The user starts in—or is aban- Pat Brown is a graduate student in Film
of other games released in the last decade, it’s doned to, one might say—an effectively infi- Studies at the University of Iowa. No, that
labeled an “open-world” game. Unlike tra- nite world. This world is populated by blocks doesn't mean he makes movies; he just likes
ditional video games that either have linear of various minerals the user may harvest to them a lot.
progression through levels toward an ultimate build tools and shelter, animals who essentially
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
17
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May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
19
Entertainment
“P
JEROME ALGIERS
www.LittleVillageMag.com
the person making out
with the girl I’d judged
hottest thing ever. But
there was no time to
indulge my misery as
I found I desperately
needed to make room
for a middle-aged woman who was using the full force of her generously proportioned backside to propel her
perplexed but smiling dance partner across the
length of the dance floor. Yeah, it was weird,
and unnerving, and just a whole lot to take in.
But I kind of loved it.
Matt Fee’s trap wound down and Matt Rissi
took the stage next, starting in on a set of bass-
ornstar’s Ball. Tits and techno. joke. My desire to carve out semi-permanent
This is going to be crazy.” On space to mill about soon gave way to my curioshearing that last utterance in ity about just who turns out for Pornstar’s Ball.
After making a few rounds about the club, I
my friend’s pitch for potential
weekend plans, I couldn’t help but clench my came to recognize that this was likely the most
fist. “This is going to be crazy” is usually all I diverse electronic dance music (EDM) show
need to shoot down whatever proposal follows. I’d ever attended. And I don’t mean the kind of
Say this to me in conjunction with the mention token diversity you find in a college-brochure
of “hitting up the bars,” “long anticipated shop- with everyone united
ping trip,” or “indie rock band,” and I am liable in zombie smiles of toto just lose it. Just because something is fun and getherness despite their
enjoyable, doesn’t make it crazy. No one knows differences in skin colthis better than an unreconstructed thrill-seeker or or manner of dress.
like myself whose enjoyment hinges on things No, I mean, raw, real
diversity. People comactually being crazy.
But the mismatch of “tits and techno,” the ing from all walks of
event’s rallying cry as I eventually learned, life—race, class, genwas enough to give me pause. It did have der, social scene—who
the genuine ring of crazy. Things sounded wouldn’t otherwise asonly more promising as the details filled in. sociate with each other.
Pornstar’s Ball was an all-night
>>> The Pornstars' Ball
rave being thrown at Woody’s
Showclub in Cedar Rapids. It Friday, May 10 | Woody's (9395 6th St SW,
was being put on primarily under
Cedar Rapids) | 18+ (21+ BYOB)
the guidance of Matt Rissi, a DJ
Music from 10:30 p.m.-5:00 a.m.
whose Iowa City shows I always
turned out for, in a locally notoAfter making my own
rious highway stripclub which, from what I
could gather, represented everything right and way to the dance floor
wrong about a Midwestern gentleman’s club. I to join up with friends
was sold. Here was something with the prom- and appreciate the crowd
ise of actual crazy—out of the ordinary, un- from the inside, I found
predictable, uncertain. Something that might my mind riffing on sound
actually push the envelope rather than just clashes in electronic music. A DJ strings together
repackaging routine nightlife fare.
On March 8, I cabbed it up I-380 with a a disparate set of sounds
few friends to the Pornstar’s Ball. After finally in a way that first jars the Photo by Joshua Distraction
making it into Woody’s I watched a stripper listener to attention and
with a crazy fit body, clad in nothing more than then gradually tries to habituate them to all these heavy techno. The space in front of the stage
a pink thong, turn her ass out to the crowd as if pieces that don’t seem to fit. This wasn’t really a begins to fill in with raver girls who danced
to wordlessly pose the question, “Is there any part of the trap music I was hearing, but I felt like and circulated the ubiquitous EDM “Crank
way I could make this look better?” A second I was watching the visual equivalent of this as the It” sign to one another. The next few hours
were a welcome assault on the senses, as I
later, she was giving the stumped onlookers crowd came together in fits and spurts.
I was mesmerized by the sight of a très chic cycled back and forth through various states
the answer, letting loose a mean yet effortless
twerk. The DJ setup to her right was flanked duo in designer dresses that danced side-by- of arousal driven by conversation, chemicals
on its left by a collection of neon-skirted and side a heavyset, gangster rap fan (a fact his and lust, all while never seeming to have to
tank-topped raver chicks seeming to cheer t-shirt declares in no uncertain terms) who move to anything below 130 bpm. I dwelled
on the gyrations, waving their arms back and bobbed his head in time with the beat while on another analogy between electronic music
and the interactions of the crowd, but it is hard
forth to the music in fluid, aimless zigzags. sucking on an LED pacifier.
I found myself tallying up what seems like to pick distinct memories out of the blur.
Out of the ordinary? Check.
The line between amateur and professional
The first major challenge of the evening was the most multicultural display of fauxhawks
the crowd. Apparently, the 500 RSVP was no I’d ever seen in such close quarters until my dancers got blurred as well, as the strippers
heart sank as the last one I spotted belonged to mixed in with the crowded assortment of ravers
20 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
PORNSTARS BALL
could be a professional dancer, one of the nonexotic variety. This followed by a rolling of
my eyes as I realized she’d probably be making a fraction of her current income. And, with
that my mind shifted from parallels between
ravers and strippers to parallels between strippers and DJs. Just the way I respected this girl
Here was something with the promise
even more how lucratively she’s using her talof actual crazy—out of the ordinary,
ent, I feel the same esteem for Rissi bringing
unpredictable, uncertain.
Something that might actually push the envelope his DJ skills to the stripclub. Rather than putrather than just repackaging routine nightlife fare. ting on another warehouse show in purist fashion, Rissi had the entrepreneurial savvy to put
on an event in the one local venue that would
age flattering hot pants, are now mainstays of actually have no problem holding an event on
EDM festivals—but, what got me was seeing rave time-frame. Add to this how the off-thethe strippers at Woody’s bring this full circle, wall venue choice actually draws people in by
donning rave accessories like rainbow striped the hundreds, rather than turning them away.
Whatever its rocky moments, when seen as a
stockings and UV paint for the night.
The pinnacle of this melding of styles is em- whole, Pornstar’s Ball was a stroke of genius.
bodied by the stripper with porcelain-pale skin,
framed by multi-colored furry boots and a shock
of blue hair. If it wasn’t for the ease and grace Jerome Algiers is a writer based in Iowa CIty
with which she balances her body against the who has clearly spent much more time thinkpole, I’d be willing to believe she just came in as ing about the relationship between EDM and
a regular EDM kid and, at some point during the stripclubs than he has about his pseudonym.
night, elected to try her hand on stage on a whim.
That ease and grace stuck out in my mind
so much that I blithely concluded that this girl
over the course of the night. I don’t mean that
as some glib dig at EDM’s penchant for risque
fashion—its true that attire honed for the stripper’s stage, from nipple pasties to cheek cleav-
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May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
21
Art City
BRIAN PRUGH
Best in Show
Highlights from this year's
batch of UI MFA shows
I
t’s graduation time in Iowa City, and for
the University of Iowa’s School of Art
and Art History, that means an avalanche
of visiting artist and MFA shows are going up and then coming down far too quickly.
Off campus, there is the general upswell of
creative activity that spring always seems to bring: A new art
gallery has opened up on the south
side of town—McNutt Gallery—
and alternative downtown spaces
like the Paper Nest are staying
busy presenting interesting shows.
For this column, though, we
will attempt to draw some attention to a few highlights from the
MFA show circuit. These easyto-miss shows almost always last
only one week, and certainly deserve more than a paragraph each,
but here are some quick thoughts
on some of the work:
Mary Coats’ MFA show in
Art Gallery West was as sen- Mary Coats
sitively calibrated as those of
us who have come to know her
work would expect. An incredibly intense
wall painting and some recent paintings with
slightly looser forms were balanced against
carefully selected pairings of paintings from
the past two years. One section stood out to me
sharply: In the back of the gallery, covering
holes in the wall that have never been patched,
were a collection of four very minimal wood,
Liz Davenport
22 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
white and gray paintings with pink edges that
never looked better. Held against the noise of
some of the more intense color combinations
in the main gallery, these quiet works give a
sense of a more delicate range of expression.
Get
Artsy
Gallery Shows of note
for May 1-15
RETURNED TO LIFE
Alexandra Janezic
The Paper Nest (220 E. Washington—
Behind Beadology)
Fri., May 3 5-8 pm (opening)
Liz Davenport’s show at Public Space
One (PS1) was large, baroque and delightful. I
was pleased to see paintings that I have become
familiar with dressed up in new clothing, looking confident and assured in their surroundings.
New work surprised me: The “Water Room”
with its waves is fresh and delightfully simple.
There was evidence all around the gallery of
a confident hand and a genuine
confrontation with the disconcerting emptinesses of modern life.
But Davenport’s paintings hold
out against the abyss: Her darkly
imaginative world keeps the artist
present in the work, the precariously constructed worlds acting
as a kind of ballast against despair.
Naqeeb Stevens’ MFA
show in the Porch Gallery at
Studio Arts had as its center a
handmade sidewalk apron—a
transition from sidewalk to street.
An addition to Iowa City's mix of alternative gallery spaces like White Rabbit
and Prairie Lights, the Paper Nest has
great promise as a unique installation
space for small work. Through May, they
will be exibiting drawings by Alexandra
Janezic, an MFA candidate at The
University of Iowa Center for the Book
who grew up in Buffalo, New York.
THE ARTISTS
McNutt Gallery (204 Stevens Drive)
Through May 22
The McNutt Gallery is making a go at
showing serious work for an Iowa City
audience, and this group show includes
an impressive roster of faculty, visitors,
current and former Iowa students and
others. Located in a space outside of
the downtown loop, this gallery has the
potential to really add something new
to the local art scene.
MFA REVIEWS
www.LittleVillageMag.com
Naqeeb Stevens
An ungainly thing, and something I only started
to really notice when pushing around a stroller
on a regular basis, but a moment of everyday
transition in walking. The two videos, hard to
look at, forced a confrontation with the in-between of life—the words describing dialogue
(“said,” “asked,” “replied”) and steps through
an endless hallway in a nameless store.
Heath Schultz’s “unspectacular” MFA
show in the Drewlowe made very clear why
the current School of Art and Art History’s prohibition of MFA shows outside of University
property is a little silly. Two chairs in front of
a screen did the job of “showing” his video,
but the screenings at PS1 were much more to
the point. In any event, Schultz re-made Guy
Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle for the
21st Century, sustaining Debord’s argument,
correcting his errors and generally making
clear that things are as bad as they ever were.
But there is hope in this film—perhaps hope
only that by thinking a little bit more clearly,
what is real and what is spectacle might more
readily reveal themselves. This, at least, would
be progress.
Jeff Trueblood’s MFA show in Art
Gallery West was long on atmosphere: He
painted the walls a deep blue-gray, which
allowed his “night” paintings a sufficiently
dark ground not to pop off the walls. These
paintings represent largely uninhabited dark
landscapes, and abound in acidic purples and
violet-reds balanced against natural landscape
forms or, in a couple of notable cases, eerily
lit snows. All is not well in this world, and in
their most successful moments, the black of
night, the violet-tinged shadows and warm
man-made lighting open out into a quietly disturbing scenario.
Brian Prugh is a graduate student studying painting at the University of Iowa. He also writes art
criticism for the Iowa City Arts Review, found
online at iowacityartsreview.com.
(All images provided by the artists)
E. BURLINGTON
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S. CLINTON
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May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
23
Talking Movies
WARREN SPROUSE
Now
Showing
More shows of note
for May 1-15
Scary Movie V
Malcolm D. Lee
Marcus Theatres
No
Sometimes it's not that easy
to just say No.
D
uring the run-up to the Iraq war,
there was a popular bumper sticker
which satirized the idea of Iraqi
elections. It showed an imaginary
Iraqi ballot with two voting options. Option one
said “I vote for Saddam Hussein;” option two
said “Please arrest me and torture my family.”
Chilean voters in 1988 may have felt that
their options were similarly limited. Pablo
Larrain’s No—Chile’s entry to the best foreign
film category at this February’s Oscars—tells
the story of that country’s 1988 referendum
on whether dictator Augusto Pinochet would
remain in power for another eight years, or if
Chile would opt to hold open elections to install a new government.
It is surely a symptom of the perversity of
superpower foreign policy during the Cold
War that, after the U.S. government had helped
to create the Pinochet regime and then propped
it up for 15 years, it decided to throw its political and economic weight behind the nationwide referendum. Despite U.S. assistance in
the effort to secure a 'no' vote, however, the
movie’s protagonist—advertising man Rene
Saavedra who is leading the “No” campaign—
has his hands full. Since, in a Latin American
military dictatorship, nationwide elections can
be conducted in less than a year and a half,
Saavedra and his team must come up with a
24 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
strategy, create a campaign and deliver the
message within a period of just a few weeks.
Add to this the very real tension of whether
the regime will even go along with the legitimate outcome of this vote, and the associated
threats to the family members of those working on the campaign, and you end up with
something like Mad Men meets The Year of
Living Dangerously or, more ominously, The
Killing Fields.
Political movies made in the U.S. these
days seem to sort themselves into a few categories. First are the heroic tales of accomplishment against past social barriers, which
have been heroically transcended: 42—The
Jackie Robinson Story awaits summer audiences. Second are the tortured but, ultimately,
enlightening stories of historical re-conceptualization: The saga of Lincoln’s presidency
has already been re-told to us by an Irishman.
More recent is the worship of the heroic and
unaccountable clandestine services, sometimes aided by the film industry itself: securing the freedom of erstwhile hostages in
the Iran of 1979 in Ben Affleck’s Argo, and
the somewhat more shadowy exploits of the
Navy Seals in Zero Dark Thirty. All these are
worthwhile, though maybe somewhat narcissistic, endeavors of political filmmaking. But
where are the political films that can do it all—
that can give viewers a compelling narrative,
Malcolm Lee does an admirable job of
trying to keep up with the absurd pretexts for horror movies in the early 21st
century. Between the internet, foreign
markets and the homeland, this must
get exhausting. Scary Movie V probably
looks a lot like Scary Movie 10,000, but it
nonetheless keeps us current with why
we walked out on much in the current
horror films genre, once we’d finished
the Junior Mints.
42
Brian Helgeland
Marcus Theatres
Thoughtful Americans, after watching 42, may ask a series of difficult, yet
fundamental, questions to our national
history—should sport count at all as a
measure of social change? Was Jackie
Robinson or Branch Rickey the real hero
of the integration of baseball? Would
integration have happened no matter
what, or was Jackie Robinson the only
player who could realistically accomplish it? Brian Helgaland’s film answers
none of these questions, but instead
offers a superficial, though uplifting,
account of the integration of America’s
pastime.
www.LittleVillageMag.com
interesting characters and a reasonably objective view of actual historical circumstances?
Alas, we may have to look abroad (again) to
a tragic but profound political situation that
the U.S. government—spoiler alert—helped
to create. At a time when G.I. Joe Retaliation
shows at not one, but ALL of the Marcus
Theaters in Iowa City, perhaps the Chileans
can teach us something.
The C.I.A. must count as some sort of
victory the fact that the campaign to vote
out Pinochet comes off more as advertising
than as revolution. Saavedra, played by Gael
García Bernal, insists on this approach from
the beginning: Portraying the evils of Pinochet
will only convince people to be afraid of those
evils, but portraying the alternative as better
will more certainly win the day.
Bernal’s character does not exactly come
off as the Chilean Don Draper, but his creative
process has some of the same approach (minus
the heavy drinking). He has the rather daunting assignment of convincing Chileans to do
something which their own government has
told them is wrong, unpatriotic and potentially
dangerous. He goes about this not by pointing
out the injustices, corruption and human rights
abuses of the Pinochet regime, but by essentially making democracy look fun.
The film’s story is told in a sort of pastiche,
comprised of family drama, crowd shots of
political rallies and snippets of the ads themselves. While it shares some of Argo’s selfcongratulatory theme that the cinema industrial complex in some indirect way can promote
Pablo Larrain's "NO"
meaningful freedom, No is much more about
how film sells itself: that the packaging of the
media message is sometimes just as important
as the truths it reveals.
American politics, in its own expensive
and indirect way, similarly forces a choice between ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in most of its national elections: Is it ‘morning in America’ or four more
years of the same old thing? At the very time
that Chileans were being
asked to make a life-altering choice between the
continuation of a military
dictatorship or the prospect of an untested, potentially disastrous democratic future, American
voters were being given
the infamous Willie Horton ad campaign and
embarrassing pictures of Michael Dukakis trying to see over the hood of an Abrams tank.
Pablo Larrain‘s movie reminds us that the
two political approaches are maybe not that
far apart. In both countries the message is
mediated by the inelegant chicanery of the
sales pitch, but we can’t help but feel that the
posturing in our case is both more resourceintensive, and at the same time, somehow less
stark. A revolution, as Mao Zedong famously
remarked, is not a dinner party. It may, however, be a movie, screenplay or television
campaign.
For American audiences at least, Pablo
Larrain’s No forces us to ask why we have
been wasting all those advertising dollars on
Super Bowl beer commercials rather than on
more profound issues. In Chile’s case, these
are issues of life or death.
No plays at the Bijou May 1-2.
Warren Sprouse teaches high school in Cedar
Rapids. He sends his sympathies to the Cuban
national baseball team.
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
25
On the Beat
A.C. HAWLEY
www.LittleVillageMag.com
LIVE
MUSIC
PREVIEW
T
he month of May has come, and,
while this means nothing for the
various working stiffs in Iowa City, it
does signal one of my favorite times
of the year: the exodus of most of the undergrads and the summer slowdown. Everyone's
more relaxed, restaurants don't have lines and
I get free reign of Brothers ... if I wanted that.
Although the slowdown applies to many realms
of day-to-day life, it does not apply to nightlife
in Iowa City. May is the start of a very busy,
very promising concert season. While there is
much to look forward to in the second half of
the month, the first half isn't chopped liver.
Photo via Minimalwave
Further Reductions w/ Beau Wanzer, Grave
Posture // Gabe's // May 8 // 10 p.m. // Free, 19+
Since high speed internet connections have
become the norm, great music that was once relegated to the footnotes of history and the bargain
bins of record stores has found a platform that affords greater exposure. This has allowed for many
artists to get their proper dueâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;even if it is a little
too lateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and has also been a source of inspiration
for future musicians. The latter part of this statement is applicable to Further Reductions. The
Brooklyn-based duo of Shawn Devin and Katie
Rose mine the re-found music archives of the web
to create their modern hypnotic dance music.
Devin and Rose pull heavily from the
French-Belgian punk movement of coldwave.
Although it was passed over during its time
due to the prominence of post-punk and new
wave, coldwave is defined by its heavy use of
Calendar
MUSIC
Fri., May 3
Bright Giant
Blue Moose Tap House, Free, 7 p.m.
Heatbox CD Release Party
Gabe's, $10, 9:30 p.m.
Jason Clothier
Mendoza Wine Bar, Free, 8 p.m.
Bluegrass
PS-Z, Free, 7 p.m.
Fielded
The Mill, $7, 9 p.m.
Cinco de Paco
Yacht Club, $3, 10 p.m.
Sat., May 4
Minnesota
Blue Moose Tap House, $15-18, 9 p.m.
Transit
Gabe's , $12-14, 5:15 p.m.
Noah's Ark Was a SpaceShip w. Emperor's Club
Gabe's, $6, 10 p.m.
Big Sandy and His Fly Rite Boys
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $16-19, 8 p.m.
The Smawpad Trio
26 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
Mendoza Wine Bar, Free, 8 p.m.
Orchestra Iowa presents American Gothic
Paramount Theatre (Cedar Rapids), $18-48, 7:30 p.m.
Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis
Redstone Room (Davenport), $17-20, 8:30 p.m.
S. Carey (of Bon Iver)
The Mill, $10-12, 9 p.m.
Irish Sessions
Uptown Bill's, Free, 4:30 p.m.
Robert Johnson (One Man Band)
Uptown Bill's, Free, 7 p.m.
Seldom Seen
Yacht Club, $5, 7 p.m.
Sun., May 5
Attack Attack!
Blue Moose Tap House, $13.50-15, 5:30 p.m.
Mon., May 6
Kendrick Lamar
IMU Main Lounge, Sold Out, 7 p.m.
The Bunny The Bear
Gabe's, $8-10, 6 p.m.
Tues., May 7
Lipstick Homicide
Trumpet Blossom Cafe, 9 p.m.
Weds., May 8
Zoe Keating
Englert Theatre, $18-22, 8 p.m.
Harp Recital
Faulconer Gallery, Free, 7:30 p.m.
Katchafire
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $16-19, 7 p.m.
Burlington Street Bluegrass Band
The Mill, $5, 7 p.m.
I Hear IC
Trumpet Blossom Cafe, 8 p.m.
Thurs., May 9
METZ, No Joy, Paducah
Gardner Stage, Grinnell College, Free, 9 p.m.
Drew Nelson
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $12-15, 7 p.m.
Doug Langbehn Trio
Mendoza Wine Bar (Coralville), Free, 7 p.m.
Raw Mojo
The Mill, $6, 9 p.m.
The O'My's
Yacht Club, $5, 10 p.m.
Fri., May 10
Il Cattivo
LIVE MUSIC PREVIEW
simplistic keyboards and
drum machines as well as
its cool, detached vocal
style. Further Reductions
do not deviate from this
template. Both Devin and
Rose icily deliver their
lyrics over staccato drum
machine rhythms and futuristic keyboards, recalling bands like Absolute
Body Control and Linear
Movement as well as the
Liquid Sky soundtrack.
If you like local synth
duo Goldendust, you'll
like Further Reductions a
whole lot.
Vietnam // The Mill // May 13 // $10 Advance,
$12 Day of Show; 19+
2013 signals the re-formation of Vietnam—no,
not the country—the six piece led by Brooklynbased songwriter Michael Gerner. For the past
six years, Vietnam didn't exist. Following the
release of their self-titled album in 2007, Gerner
disbanded Vietnam and packed up shop for Los
Photo via Brooklyn Vegan
BIJOU THEATER | 319-335-3041
IOWA MEMORIAL UNION , IC
SHOWTIMES & TRAILERS AT
bijou.uiowa.edu
A non-profit, student—run cinema screening independent,
art house, foreign and classic films since 1972.
Angeles. There, he made experimental music and
film soundtracks with analog synthesizers. While
I'm sure that music is good, it's better that he is
making rock music again as Vietnam.
Vietnam has a sound that is firmly anchored
in blues, rock and Americana. It shares more
than a passing resemblance to the band The
War on Drugs due to the fact that both are influenced by Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground
and Sonic Youth. Vietnam's new album an
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Blue Moose Tap House, 8 p.m.
Casey Donehew Band
First Avenue Club, $17, 8:30 p.m.
Strictly Vinyl
Gabe's. Free, 10 p.m.
Tree Shelton Hip Hop Battle
Gabe's, $5, 10 p.m.
Dan Bern
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $17-21, 8 p.m.
Steve Grismore
Mendoza Wine Bar (Coralville), Free, 8 p.m.
Calliko
Redstone Room (Davenport), $15-20, 10 p.m.
Dick Prall
The Mill, $12-15, 9 p.m.
The Laureates
Yacht Club, $5, 9 p.m.
Sat., May 11
Andre Nickatina
Blue Moose Tap House, $15, 9 p.m.
Greg Brown Record Release Show
Englert Theatre, $30-45, 8 p.m.
The Body
Gabe's , $7, 9 p.m.
Masaki Batoh’s Brain Pulse Music
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $15-18, 8 p.m.
Tony Brown
Mendoza Wine Bar (Coralville), Free, 8 p.m.
An Evening With Bob Dorr & the Blue Band
Redstone Room (Davenport), $10, 8 p.m.
Punk Show
Trumpet Blossom Cafe, 10 p.m.
Jet Edison
Yacht Club, $6, 10 p.m.
Sun., May 12
Iowa City Community String Orchestra
Englert Theatre, Free, 3 p.m.
The Pines w. Jeffrey Foucault
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $15-18, 7 p.m.
Mon., May 13
Whitechapel w. Motionless in White
Blue Moose Tap House, $17-20, 5:30 p.m.
Vietnam
The Mill, $10-12, 9 p.m.
Tues., May 14
Enter the Haggis
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $15-18, 7 p.m.
Isotopes
Public Space One, $3, 8 p.m.
Blue Moose Tap House, $13-15, 7 p.m.
Grant-Lee Phillips
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $17-21, 7 p.m.
The Thermals
The Mill, $12-15, 9 p.m.
Thurs., May 16
Tylan (from Girlyman)
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $12-15, 7 p.m.
Miles Vincent Trio
Mendoza Wine Bar (Coralville), Free, 7 p.m.
Dan DiMonte and the Bad Assettes
Yacht Club, $5, 7 p.m.
May 2-5
La Clemenza di Tito
Englert Theatre, $5-20, 8 p.m.
Mondays: Open Mic w. J. Knight
The Mill, Free, 8 p.m.
Tuesdays: Lower Deck Dance Party
Yacht Club, $1, 10 p.m.
Wednesdays: Free Jam Session
Yacht Club, Free, 10 p.m.
Weds., May 15
Somo w. Nick Luebke
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
27
LIVE MUSIC PREVIEW
www.LittleVillageMag.com
A.merican D.ream shows Gerner shifting and
adding upon these influences. There is still the
dark lyricism, social awareness and moodiness
that mark its previous albums, but the addition of
a synthesizer and a violin brings a deeper darkness to the overall sound, making the seediness
of Gerner's world much more tangible. In the
end, an A.merican D.ream shows that although
this might be a new Vietnam with a couple of
new tricks, the old Vietnam is still around and
strong as ever.
The Laureates w/ Colin Gilmore, Julie Klee
Yacht Club // May 10 // $5, 19+
In the summer of 2011, I got a promo CD from
a band called The Laureates. There weren't too
many details outside of a fairly regular origin story. Being the listener that I am, I skipped over the
promo materials and listened to the record. The
first thing that I noticed in listening was the quality. The musicianship is very precise. The guitars
are jangly and noisy and held up by a solid rhythm
section. The harmonies are sharp and come in on
time. And, the songwriting itself is pretty good.
While all of these things are positive, a lot of
modern indie pop bands—ones not indebted to
the legend of Kurt Cobain—do this. What makes
Photo via laureatesmusic.com
The Laureates stand out from the pack?
The difference is in the pace. Their ballads are
slow but never too slow. Their pop songs are fast
but not too fast. They found the balance and made
crisp songs that are fully entertaining. Although
they've only been playing as a band since 2007,
The Laureates’ sound suggests they've been playing together longer than that because they know
how far they can push themselves without it
seeming unnatural. It's similar to a skill possessed
by The Ponys, another Chicago pop band that
has a sonic attack—and finesse—similar to The
Laureates. Much like the pop bands around Iowa
City, The Laureates are worth checking out.
A.C. Hawley runs The Chrysanthemum Sound
System on KRUI 89.7 FM. It airs on Thursday
nights from 10:00 p.m. to the Witching Hour.
Calendar
Thursdays: Gemini Karaoke
Blue Moose Tap House, Free, 9 p.m.
Soulshake
Gabe's, Free, 10 p.m.
Little Village Live
Public Space One, Free, 5 p.m.
Open Mic
Uptown Bill's, Free, 7 p.m.
ARTS/EXHIBITION
Fri., May 3
ArtsFest
Studio Arts Bldg. 1375 Hwy 1 West, Free, 4 p.m.
Opening Reception: Brendan Baylor
Public Space One, Free, 7 p.m.
Sun., May 5
Exhibition Closes: University of Iowa Faculty
Biennial
Figge Art Museum, Free, 5 p.m.
Cheap Art Bazaar
PS-Z, Free, 1 p.m.
28 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
Figge Art Museum, Free, 6 p.m.
Thurs., May 9
Art Talk : American POP Art!
Figge Art Museum, Free, 7 p.m.
Sat., May 11
Beaux Arts Fair
Figge Art Museum, $2, 10 p.m.
Exhibition Opens: Young Artists at the Figge
Figge Art Museum, Free, 10 a.m.
Exhibit Opens: The Madeleine Albright
Collection
National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library,
Free, 10 a.m.
Sun., May 12
Exhibition Closes - Bertha Jaques: Botanical
Prints and Photographs
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Free, 12 p.m.
Tour of American POP! and Selections from the
CU Art Museum Collection
Figge Art Museum, Free, 1:30 p.m.
Thurs., May 16
American POP! Selections from the CU Art
Museum Collection
May 10-12
Crescent City Beads Trunk Show
Beadology, Free, 12 p.m.
May 3-July 16
Trouble the Water
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), Free
May 4-Sept. 1
Pushing the Envelope
Figge Art Museum, Free
American POP Art!
Figge Art Museum, Free
Jorie Slodki
University of Iowa
Theatre
New Play Festival
May 5-12
Though the University of Iowa presents excellent theatre throughout the school year, its
reputation in playwriting comes to full flower
in the University’s annual New Play Festival.
During the last week of spring semester classes, the department stages five full productions
of plays by MFA playwriting students, daily
readings of scripts by MFA and undergraduate students and roundtable discussions of
the works presented. Guest artists, which this
year include Emmy-winning writer and producer Rick Cleveland and Sarah Lunnie of the
Actors Theatre of Louisville, attend each full
production and provide feedback to the playwrights during the roundtable discussions. The
theatre department cancels classes during the
festival so that students may attend as many
events as possible. Consider attending a show
or reading—you never know which play will
become the next modern classic. The festival
runs from May 5-12. For more information on
individual plays, guest artist biographies and
a complete schedule events, visit the Theatre
Department website at theatre.uiowa.edu/production/new-play-festival.
Dreamwell Theatre
The Children’s Hour
May 10, 11, 17, 18
Dreamwell Theatre continues their season’s focus on female playwrights with The
Children’s Hour, directed by Elizabeth Tracey.
Based on a true story, the play focuses on a
troubled student at a girl’s boarding school
who begins a rumor that two of the school’s
LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/CALENDAR
Ongoing
Yunomi Invitational
Akar Design, Free
Brendan Baylor Exhibition
Public Space One, Free
Barry Anderson
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), Free
Native Kids Ride Bikes
Black Box Theater, Iowa Memorial Union, Free
Thursdays: Artvaark (Art Activities)
Uptown Bill's, Free, 6 p.m.
THEATRE
Through May 4
R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)
Theatre Cedar Rapids, $15-20
The Wizard of Oz
Theatre Cedar Rapids, $20-30
Fri., May 10
SPANK! The Fifty Shades Parody
Paramount Theatre (Cedar Rapids), $28-38, 7:30 p.m.
The Stage
female teachers are lesbians. Focused on the
subjects of LGBT issues and harassment, the
play feels ahead of its time. Indeed, when it
premiered on Broadway in 1934, the very
mention of homosexuality in a play was a
crime in New York. The play runs at the
Unitarian Universalist Society in Iowa City on
May 10, 11, 17 and 18. For more information
on purchasing tickets, visit dreamwell.com.
City Circle Acting
Company of Coralville
A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum
May 10-12, 17-19
Are you in the mood for something familiar?
Something peculiar? How about something for
everyone? Check out City Circle’s production
of the Tony Award-winning musical, A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, directed by Patrick Du Laney. With music and
lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, the plot is a wild
and witty farce based on Miles Gloriosus and
other Ancient Roman comedies by Plautus,
Calendar
May 10-11
The Children’s Hour
Dreamwell Theatre, $10-13, 7:30 p.m.
Tues., May 7
The Seven Year Itch
Theatre Cedar Rapids, $3, 6:30 p.m.
May 10-19
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Coralville Center for the Performing Arts, $12-27
Thurs., May 9
Screening of "Half the Sky"
Figge Art Museum, $10-12, 6 p.m.
Through May 26
The Last Romance
Old Creamery Theatre (Amana), $18-27
Fri., May 10
Manet: Portraying Life Exhibition Series
Englert Theatre, $15-18, 7 p.m.
CINEMA
Fri., May 3
Love Free or Die
Trinity Episcopal Church (Iowa City), Free, 7 p.m.
Mon., May 6
Film Screening by Jesse McLean
Public Space One, Free, 7:30 p.m.
Sun., May 12
abUSed: The Postville Raid screening
Public Space One, Free, 1 p.m.
LITERATURE
Fri., May 3
Ink Lit Mag Issue #4 Release Party
Public Space One, Free, 7 p.m.
Voicebox
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $7 Suggested Donation,
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
29
THEATRE PREVIEW
but with a vaudevillian flair. The play runs
May 10-12 and 17-19 at the Coralville Center
for Performing Arts. For more information on
show times and tickets, visit citycircle.org.
Fourth Room Theatre
Cymbeline
May 24-26, May 30-June 1
Can’t wait until the middle of summer for
your outdoor Shakespeare fix? Fourth Room
Theatre, the newest independent theatre
company in Iowa City, will stage an ambitious production of William Shakespeare’s
Cymbeline. Based on ancient Celtic legends,
the play straddles an uneasy line between tragedy, comedy, romance and fantasy—making it
one of Shakespeare’s least-performed works.
Critics have found the play so problematic that
even playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote
his own ending! Director Angie Toomsen
hopes to bring a sense of enchantment to the
audience, including an outdoor performance
space, bird motifs and ghostly spirits. The
core members of Fourth Room OF THE FALLS
Theatre want the play to be as UI New Play Festival
accessible as it is entertaining, David Thayer Theatre
and have been working on a May 5 | 5:30 and 9:00 p.m.
fundraising campaign to make $5 (students free)
the production free to the public. The play will be staged
May 24-26 and May 30-June
1 in an outdoor space near
Kinnick Stadium. For updates,
follow Fourth Room Theatre
on Facebook. (Disclosure: The
writer of this column has a role
in this production.)
for the entire family. Adults can read into the
play’s populist symbolism. Teenagers can
find parallels to Pink Floyd music. Children,
and even jaded older members of the famTheatre Cedar Rapids
ily, delight in the songs and fanciful setting
as Dorothy Gale travels on her journey to
The Wizard of Oz
achieve her goals. The play runs at Theatre
April 26-May 18
Cedar Rapids from April 26 through May 18.
For more information, visit theatrecr.org.
A family show is one that can be enjoyed by
family members of all ages, but for different
reasons. The stage musical version of L. Frank
Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a show
Calendar
8 p.m.
Christine Sneed reading
Prairie Lights, Free, 7 p.m.
Tues., May 7
Geoffrey Nutter reading
Prairie Lights, Free, 7 p.m.
Weds., May 8
Talk Art
The Mill, Free, 10 p.m.
Thurs., May 9
Loren Glass reading
Prairie Lights, Free, 7 p.m.
Fri., May 10
Robin Hemley reading
Prairie Lights, Free, 7 p.m.
LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/CALENDAR
DANCE
COMEDY
Fri., May 3
Paperback Rhino (improv comedy)
Public Space One, $2, 10:30 p.m.
May 3-4
Mike Lawrence
Penguin's Comedy Club, $12.50, 7:30 p.m.
Fri., May 10
Aziz Ansari
Englert Theatre, Sold Out, 10 p.m.
May 10-11
Rocky LaPorte
Penguin's Comedy Club, $12.50, 7:30 p.m.
Tues., May 14
Paul's Book Club
Prairie Lights, Free, 7 p.m.
Mondays: Catacombs of Comedy
Yacht Club, $3, 9 p.m.
Wednesdays: Spoken Word
Uptown Bill's, Free, 7 p.m.
Thursdays: The Everyone Gets Laid Comedy Show
Gabe's, $3, 8 p.m.
30 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
Jorie Slodki earned her MA in Theatre
Research from University of Wisconsin,
Madison, and has past experience in acting,
directing and playwriting.
Weds., May 8
UI Swing Club
Public Space One, Free, 7:30 p.m.
Sat., May 11
Undergraduate Dance Concert
Space Place Theatre, $6-12, 8 p.m.
KIDS
Fri., May 3
Doodlebugs Preschool Program
Ladd Library (Cedar Rapids), Free, 10:30 a.m.
Sat., May 4
Celebrate Your Super Power!
Iowa Children's Museum, 10 a.m.
Broadway Buddies: Session 4 Begins
Iowa Children's Museum, $60, 9 p.m.
LITTLEVILLAGEMAG.COM/CALENDAR
Sun., May 5
IYWP Food Writing Workshop
PS-Z, Free, 10 a.m.
Mon., May 6
Kids Drama Club
PS-Z, Free, 6 p.m.
Thurs., May 9
Pajama Story Time - Grand Prix
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Free, 7 p.m. ICPL
Groovin' at the Englert
Englert Theatre, Free, 10:20 a.m.
Sat., May 11
Saturday Morning Cartoons
Faulconer Gallery, Free, 1 p.m.
Sun., May 12
IYWP Food Writing Workshop
PS-Z, Free, 10 a.m.
Mon., May 13
Kids Drama Club
PS-Z, Free, 6 p.m.
Tues., May 14
Family Night
Coralville Public Library, Free, 6:30 p.m.
Weds., May 15
Homeschool Day: G.W. Carver
African American Museum of Iowa, 1 p.m.
Thurs., May 16
Toddler Story Time
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Free, 1:30 p.m.
Tuesdays: Preschool Storytime
Coralville Public Library, Free, 10:30 a.m.
Thursdays:
Toddler Story Time
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Free, 1:30 p.m.
Wee Read
Coralville Public Library, Free, 10:15 & 11:15 a.m.
Art Adventure: Clay Play!
Iowa Children's Museum, Free, 3:30-4:30 p.m.
Saturdays:
Family Storytime
Coralville Public Library, Free, 10:30 a.m.
MISC.
Fri., May 3
Free Friday
African American Museum of Iowa, Free, 10 a.m.
Celebration Mixer
African American Museum of Iowa, Free, 5 p.m.
Gallery Talk/Performance: The Sound of Purple
Minor
Faulconer Gallery, Free, 12:15 p.m.
A Damn Good Time Variety Show Vol. 4
Redstone Room (Davenport), $5, 8 p.m.
Calendar
Sun., May 12
Was the Word
Englert Theatre, $10 Suggested Donation, 7 p.m.
Listen to Your Mother
Legion Arts (Cedar Rapids), $10-15, 2 p.m.
Mother's Day Brunch
National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library,
$15-30, 12 p.m.
Tues., May 14
Arts Share: An Evening of Literature and Music
Brucemore Mansion, $5-10, 7 p.m.
Sat., May 4
20th Birthday Party
African American Museum of
Iowa, Free, 10 p.m.
Picasso and Chicago Trip
Figge Art Museum, $50-65, 8
a.m.
Digital
Photography:
A
Balanced Look/workshop
Figge Art Museum, $35-45, 12
p.m.
Tues., May 7
The Salt Company
Englert Theatre, Free, 8 p.m.
Weds., May 8
Mendoza Trivia
Mendoza Wine Bar (Coralville), Free, 8 p.m.
Thurs., May 9
Historic Neighborhood Walk
Brucemore Mansion, $12-15, 6 p.m.
Fri., May 10
Martini Madness: Enchanted
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, $35-75, 7 p.m.
Sat., May 11
Brucemore Plant Sale
Brucemore Mansion, Free, 9 p.m.
Wine Tasting, Hosted by Tabor Home Vineyards
and Winery
Englert Theatre, Free, 6 p.m.
Old Capital City Roller Girls vs. St. Chux Derby
Chix
Coralville Marriott, $10-13, 7 p.m.
20th BIrthday PARTY
African American Museum of Iowa
(55 12th Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids)
May 4 | 10 a.m-3 p.m.
Thurs., May 16
Hired Help Tour at Brucemore
Brucemore Mansion, $12-15, 6 p.m.
The Visual Universe of James Rosenquist - Lecture
Figge Art Museum, Free, 7 p.m.
Class on Watercolor 路 All Levels
Figge Art Museum, $95-105, 12 p.m.
UI Environmental Coalition Meeting
Public Space One, Free, 7 p.m.
May 4-5
Free Mansion Tours
Brucemore Mansion, Free, 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.
May 15-16
"Adult Art Camp" Found Object Jewelry with
Mary Zeran
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, $60 + $10 Material
Fee, 10 a.m.
Mondays and Thursdays: Yoga in the Gallery
with Monica St. Angelo
Faulconer Gallery, Free, 12:15 p.m.
Sundays: Funday Pub Quiz
The Mill, $1, 9 p.m.
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
31
The Straight Dope
Cecil Adams
If I traveled back in time, would I get ancient diseases?
Time-traveling back to the middle ages has
seemingly always been a popular theme in
kids’ shows, science-fiction books, etc. But
what would actually happen if a person
from our era traveled back in time? How
would the difference in air pollution make
an impact on the traveling person, and
what medieval diseases would she get? And
how many of the people there would die of
bacteria that the modern person brought
with her? —Kid from Sweden
They make it look so easy on Doctor
Who. Everyone hops into a time machine
with a madman at the controls and travels
through time, creating paradoxes and rewriting history, and somehow everything
works out. Only rarely does anyone get
sick or spread disease to their unfortunate
ancestors. It’s conceivable, I suppose, that
not only does the Doctor’s time-travel rig
come equipped with a universal translator,
it’s also got a universal inoculator.
We’ll have none of that. Instead, let’s
approach the subject in the usual Straight
Dope spirit of pessimistic realism. Limiting
the discussion to time-travel destinations
predating the discovery of antibiotics and
vaccines, we find there are two main types
of health-related trouble the intrepid temporal explorer could be setting herself up for.
The first possibility is falling prey to ancient diseases. Life during the middle ages,
and during pretty much any other era until
quite recently, was incredibly dirty, and depending on the time and place, clean food
and water were more or less unknown. Air
pollution could be a significant hazard if you
traveled back to Victorian London, or for that
matter spent a lot of time indoors around a
smoky fa yak-dung fire—evidence of lung disease has been found in ancient societies ranging from Egypt to the American Southwest.
Water and food contamination from lead
dishes and cups might be a problem, although
that would require lengthy exposure. Simply
eating or drinking anything prepared before
about 1900 would present more immediate
risks—our time traveler would have a fair
chance of acquiring intestinal worms, trichinosis, giardia, or other parasites too numerous
to list. Anthrax, tuberculosis, and botulism can
all be spread by eating the flesh of infected
animals, which I suspect were pretty common.
32 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
In early urbanized areas, dysentery, cholera,
and typhus were the rule rather than the exception. For most of human history it would be difficult for our traveler to avoid smallpox, cowpox, and variations of influenza unknown to
modern times; lepers and plague victims would
warrant a wide berth. It’s true that the modern
suite of inoculations would likely protect our
time traveler from many common diseases, unless of course she was some kind of anti-vaxxer, in which case she’d be on her own.
And of course food variety and balanced diets weren’t the norm for most of human history. Nutritional diseases such as scurvy, pellagra, and goiter could well afflict our traveler if,
having dodged all the above, she were obliged
to subsist long enough on the local cuisine.
The other, far worse possibility is visiting
modern plagues on the past. New diseases
have shown up unpredictably throughout history. In 1967 the U.S. Surgeon General boasted that we’d won the war against infectious
diseases; less than a generation later HIV/
AIDS emerged. If our time traveler was a temporal Typhoid Mary, she might gift the past
with such latter-day scourges as severe acute
respiratory system (SARS), which in the first
year of its appearance caused nearly 10 percent mortality even with modern medical care;
Ebola and Marburg viruses, although victims
die so quickly the spread of either disease
might be limited; and of course HIV/AIDS,
with a current worldwide toll of 34 million infected and 30 million dead.
But new diseases wouldn’t necessarily be
the gravest threat. Possibly the real danger
would come from ordinary illnesses that had
evolved significantly over the centuries, in
part because weaker strains had been killed off
by antibiotics. Keeping Doctor Who’s peregrinations in mind, remember also that time
travel could involve
journeying
through
space as well, meaning
one could unwittingly
bring pathogens to
regions with minimal
resistance to diseases
of any sort.
The result might be
an
epidemiological
catastrophe rivaling
those that actually occurred. As is now well
known, Old World diseases virtually depopulated the Americas
within a short time
after first contact, with
estimates of mortality
ranging as high as 90
percent. Fatal bugs included not just smallpox, which alone may
have killed more than
15 million people following its introduction in Mexico in 1520, but
everyday afflictions such as measles, mumps,
chickenpox, and scarlet fever. And let’s not
forget the 1918 pandemic involving a newly
mutated strain of influenza that killed 50 million or more.
In his classic War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
imagined that invaders from an advanced civilization might be wiped out by microbes harbored by us primitives. Judging from history,
aspiring sci-fi authors might want to note, the
more likely scenario puts the casualty count
the other way around.—CECIL ADAMS
Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or
write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans,
Chicago 60654. Subscribe to the Straight Dope
podcast at the iTunes.
www.LittleVillageMag.com
Roland Sweet
News Quirks
Curses, Foiled Again
• A mother and daughter with a baby in a stroller • Lawmakers in Mississippi, the most obese More Equal Than Others
tried to avoid paying full fare on the Philadelphia state in the nation, overwhelmingly approved an Rich Russians hoping to avoid Moscow’s
subway by sharing a day pass intended for only “anti-Bloomberg bill,” which bans communities notorious traffic jams are paying upwards of
one person. They went to the 60th Street Station, from requiring restaurants to post calorie counts $200 an hour to ride in emergency vehicles
on menus or limit portion sizes. State Sen. Tony that use their sirens to scatter traffic in their
where the cashier punched the pass and
Smith, who owns a chain of barbecue joints, said path. The newspaper Izvestiya reported that
allowed the daughter to enter.
he introduced the measure because government when police stopped one of these “ambulance
The mother then went to the
has no business telling people what they cannot taxis” for violating traffic rules, they discov56th Street Station and used the
eat. “If I want fried fish,” he declared, “that’s my ered “that the interior was fitted out like a
pass. When the two women met
high-class limousine with comfortable seats
right.” (New York’s Daily News)
up at the next station, neither had
for transporting VIP passengers.” (Britain’s
the baby. According to transit official
The Daily Telegraph)
Heather Redfern, both women assumed
when they split up that the other one had
Mother of the Year
taken the child. The women notified tranAfter someone broke into a church in St. Charles, Mo., and
After Leticia Silva, 31, was
sit police, who reunited them with the child
stole an undetermined amount of ice cream from a freezer,
jailed in Florida for drug posand declined to cite the pair for violating the
police spotted Andrew Steven Jung, 24, three blocks away,
session and lost custody of her
day-pass rule. (Philadelphia Daily News)
with ice cream all over his face and clothing. Jung told offidaughters, authorities said she
cers he was an “ice cream junkie.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
mailed the girls, ages 7 and 9,
The Thrill Is Gone
a knife from jail with instrucInspired by a YouTube video of thrilltions to murder their paternal grandparents, with
seekers swinging through arch and canyon open- Litigation Nation
ings, Kyle Lee Stocking, 22, tried to swing from • Richard and Melinda Armstrong sued the whom they live in Greenville, N.C. The grandthe top of Utah’s 140-foot-high Corona Arch. U.S. Forest Service for more than $1 million mother found the knife under one of the girl’s
Stocking died, Grand County sheriff’s Lt. Kim after a large dead tree at a remote campsite in pillows and took the girls to the Pitt County
Neal reported, because he made the rope too the Boise National Forest fell and injured their Sheriff’s Office, where they told investigators
long, and when he “swung under the arch, he 6-year-old son. The Idaho couple accused the of their mother’s instructions. A friend, Mary
Forest Service of negligence for not removing Snell, said regaining custody of her daughters
struck the ground.” (The Salt Lake Tribune)
was Silva’s “one goal in life.” (Tampa Bay’s
the tree. (Associated Press)
• Larry Shandola, 62, a Canadian man serv- WFLA-TV)
Law Makers
• Montreal police arrested some 300 people ing a 31-year sentence in a Washington state
protesting a city law against demonstrating prison for a 1995 murder, sued the victim’s Badder Business Bureau
Authorities charged David Kitzki with setwithout first providing police an itinerary of widow, blaming her for persuading corthe protest route. The police charged the dem- rections officials to deny his transfer to a ting fire to his house in Mequon, Wis. Kitzki,
onstrators with violating the law they were Canadian prison by placing him “in a false who owns his own fire-inspection business,
protesting by failing to notify authorities of light.” Shandola is seeking $100,000 in dam- told investigators he put a lit cigarette in a garages from Paula Henry. Calling the suit a ploy bage can to see how long it would take to start
their route. (Canada’s QMI Agency)
• Prodded by the meat and poultry industries, to harass and torment Henry, her lawyer, John a fire and then for the smoke detectors to go
state legislators nationwide are introducing Ladenburg said he doesn’t expect it to get very off, but it started burning out of control and he
laws making it harder for animal-welfare ad- far in court but lamented, “He wins by costing was unable to put it out himself. (Milwaukee’s
WISN-TV)
vocates to investigate cruelty and food-safety her money.” (Canada’s The National Post)
cases. Measures in Indiana, Arkansas and
Drinking-Class Heroes
Pennsylvania, for example, would outlaw Help a Brobot Out
videotaping agricultural operations. Iowa A new web-based informational data- • After police charged a 27-year-old man
already made it illegal to deny belonging to base for robots by robots provides advice with impaired driving in Innisfil, Ontario, he
an animal-welfare organization when apply- that helps robots simplify complex tasks. called his mother to take him home. When
ing for a farm job. Other bills are pending Designed by European researchers who cre- the 53-year-old woman showed up a couple
in California, Nebraska and Tennessee. The ated RoboEarth, “a World Wide Web for of hours later, the officer who arrested her
force behind this legislative agenda, whose robots,” the open-source robotics platform son smelled alcohol on her and gave her a
purpose, Paul Shapiro, vice president of farm Rapyuta lets robots move their heavy com- Breathalyzer test. She failed and was charged
animal protection for the Humane Society of putations into the cloud. It catalogs situations with impaired driving. (The Canadian Press)
the United States, insisted, “is to prevent any and objects that robots have encountered so • Less than a week after Floyd County, Ky.,
pattern of abuse from being documented,” is other robots can access the information in- Sheriff John K. Blackburn was charged with
the American Legislative Exchange Council. stead of having to build up their databases drunken driving, his son, Jeffrey Blackburn,
It labels those who interfere with animal op- from scratch. Project leader Mohanarajah was charged with public intoxication.
erations “terrorists” and titled the California Gajamohan said that by decreasing the power (Associated Press)
bill the “Animal and Ecological Terrorist needed for on-board computation, Rapyuta
Act,” although an AELC official admitted could make robots cheaper, longer running Compiled from mainstream news sources by
Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.
“Freedom to Farm Act” would’ve sounded and more mobile. (BBC News)
better. (Associated Press)
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
33
Local Albums
send ALBUMS for review to: little village, po box 736, iowa city, ia 52244
Huge Lewis isn’t. Part of their aesthetic is to
ride right up to the edge of being annoying.
They hint at this by naming themselves after the
second most annoying pop rock vocalist ever,
Huey Lewis (the first being Eddie Money).
Merchandise
Totale Nite (Night-People
Records)
merchandisetheband.wordpress.com
This isn’t a mistake. This is a review for
Tampa buzz-band Merchandise in the “Local
Albums” pages of Little Village. After heaps
of accolades from the music press—NME and
Pitchfork among others—the Florida trio went
to Iowa City’s own Night-People to release
their latest album, Totale Nite.
The five-song slab finds the Florida trio
at their genre-bending best. The lead single,
“Anxiety’s Door,” has garnered most of the
early ink, and rightly so. The album’s second
track opens with a tightly coiled rhythm section that explodes with David Vassalotti’s raw
nerve guitar lick—which just begs for you to
hum along. When the sparkling guitar recedes,
the velvety baritone croon of Carson Cox
floats in with a sobering load of solipsism:
“Some things / Are never really there. / I walk
the street at night, / I drink the perfumed air.”
“Anxiety’s Door” is fraught with dynamic
tension. Merchandise highlights Cox’s vocals
with simple, arena-ready propulsion; when he
pulls back from the mic, Vassalotti leads the
composition off into deeper waters. The solo
and repetition of the opening guitar figure that
ends the song is accompanied by winter storm
wind gusts from the keyboards and eerie, distant wails from Cox.
The group’s taught, post-punk numbers
(“Anxiety’s Door,” “Who Are You?,” and
“Totale Nite”) are strong. You can really
hear the punk roots of the band’s early days.
However, the real key to Totale Nite’s success
is the effectiveness of the album’s two ballads.
Especially strong is the road-weary third cut,
“I’ll Be Gone.” The maudlin plod Merchandise
establishes actually ends up opening sonic real
34 May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
estate for Cox to really let his baritone brood
and Vassolatti’s guitar explore textures in sustained chords and arpeggiated runs. The gist
of the lyrics isn’t entirely clear, both due to a
bit of slurring and some opaque imagery (“to
walk in the daytime / amidst a hundred burning computers), but the distance and isolation
are felt in the aching vocal delivery and the
expansive fret work. The aural equivalent of
showing, not telling.
If John Schlotfelt were an Instagram filter he’d
be Hudson: retro, a little worn, but not too ostentatious. #NoLoFi
Huge Lewis
Ascending Into Heaven
hugelewis.bandcamp.com
“I have swallowed the sky/through only a
straw”—the 56-second opener of Ascending Into
Heaven is a quiet moment of organ and silly psychedelic lyrics that ends without resolving to the
tonic. It gives no clue to the sloppy, unhinged pop
songs that follow it. The rest of the songs make
me think of middle period Pavement, but where
Pavement grooves, Huge Lewis lurches and yelps.
Music this carefully constructed and carelessly implemented could be off-putting, but
Other Iowa City bands set out to damage their
audience’s hearing without bothering to properly tune their guitars; it’s no innovation. But
Huge Lewis imbues every chord progression
on Ascending Into Heaven with tricky modulations that go back to the Beatles and Big Star.
Nothing here is a two-chord piss take.
Recorded as it is in a deliberately primitive manner by Amana-based pop weirdo Ian
Williams, I can’t really catch most of what
they’re singing. From what I could make out,
the album closer “Curse Words” contains no
actual curse words. It’s rendered in syllables
so tortured they might as well be in Tagalog
or Old Low Norse. Towards the end I catch
the singer wailing “No social conscience! No
consciences!” Trying to follow what’s being
sung is like making sense of the fine print on
the Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap bottle: It
means something, but the effort of figuring it
out makes you dizzy.
All this slap-dashery hangs together, just.
Lurking in this basement junk pile of an album is surprisingly sophisticated song-craft.
There are bands (Jesus & Mary Chain comes
to mind) that were ruined by achieving technical proficiency. Huge Lewis’ songs could
actually survive more careful treatment, but
they’re kind of great just as they are: both baffling and ingratiating.
Kent Williams is the son of Ofeig Clumsyfoot,
who was the son of Ivar Horsetail.
Contact Dr. Star at Dr.Star@LittleVillageMag.com
Dr. Star
Stars Over Iowa City
ASTROLOGY FORECAST FOR MAY 2013
FOR EVERYONE—In May, we will find ourselves swept down a new road with only minimal preparation. We just have to trust that countless small decisions,
made over a long period of time, often on the fly, have prepared us. The planets are taking things into their own hands. The world will work by different rules. It
will suddenly respond better to sharing, consensus-building and cooperation, for example. Progressive views will be more welcome. In the meantime, until you get
it figured out, prepare to be surprised.
TAURUS (April 19 - May 19) Taureans
are putting themselves on a new footing,
aspirationally, socially and financially.
Changes in Taurus’s financial situation make this
change necessary and also help make it possible.
This departure from your old life takes place amidst
a rapidly evolving social and economic context.
Fortunately, the planets have lined up to help Taurus
find the right partners. Others are making similarly
comprehensive changes. Your efforts to manage the
details of this difficult and fateful transition will yield
especially useful insights. Others need to hear them.
GEMINI (May 20 - June 19) All the
altering things in this fast-changing world
seem to run through Gemini’s life. More so
because Gemini possesses a special charm and an
aura of prosperity nowadays. The issues are evolving
rapidly and the first answer you give will not be the
last. Second-guesses are inevitable, but things are
important and you’ll need to be involved. Offer your
honest, heartfelt opinion. You’ll be delighted at the
influence you can exert on the process. People will
even take your personal wish list seriously.
CANCER (June 20 - July 21) Events
are moving fast. Emotions are turbulent.
Priorities are conflicting. Thoughts are
confused. Events are affecting your support systems.
Cancerians are hard-wired to create and maintain
support systems; planetary influences have been
strengthening those instincts. Recent experience has
honed your ability to combat determined opposition.
Your intuition is well-supplied with relevant insight.
Your confidence is high; however, you have no
direct leverage. Your skillful behind-the-scenes
efforts could be all that keeps dubious “reforms,”
some well-intentioned, some not, from dismantling
the support systems you’ve built.
LEO (July 22 - Aug. 21) Most Leos probably
realize by now that they have an enviable
degree of influence over today’s difficult,
complicated and seemingly unpredictable events. This
influence, though potent, is indirect and occasionally
causes consequences of the unintended kind. Your
influence is especially effective in May, and if you make
the wrong choice, things can go wildly awry. To ensure
the best outcome this time around you might have to
take a detached approach and oppose the inclinations of
your superiors. Depend more on principles and ideals.
VIRGO (Aug. 22 - Sept. 21) Virgos need to
make as accurate an estimate as possible of
the effect rapidly changing circumstances
will have on their long-term financial goals.
As hard as it is to get an accurate reading on events
now, things will continue to evolve. To reach your
goal, you will need to re-calculate periodically and
adjust your trajectory accordingly. Defend your
plans; push back against pressures from higher ups,
but be realistic. Virgos can still count on their ability
to guide events in the direction they prefer.
LIBRA (Sept. 22 - Oct. 21) May is a
fateful month for Librans. You might feel
at a disadvantage and uncertain of which
direction to take. You might also feel like someone
is forcing your hand. However, you have a lot of
bargaining power and surprising influence over the
outcome. Don’t hesitate to call on this leverage, even
when confronting determined opposition from those
more powerful. Their hand isn’t as strong as everyone
thinks and your views carry more weight than you
realize. The concessions you win will benefit many.
SCORPIO (Oct. 22 - Nov. 20) Changes
are occurring in your neighborhood that you
personally find acceptable, for the most part.
But things aren’t as simple as they first appear. Many
friends will be affected and their preferences must
be taken into account. Any concessions that must be
made to satisfy them will probably not be onerous.
It’s important that you be true to your principles
throughout and that everyone involved respect that.
This will guarantee a better outcome and change the
way others regard you, in a good way.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 21 - Dec.
20) Sagittarius is cleaning out their
psychological and spiritual attic, making
room for a new vision of the future. At the same
time, they are building a new financial framework
that will give them power to manifest that vision
in the real world. Let this vision of the future be
influenced by those you love or your future will be
a lonely place. But envision a livelihood that will
allow you to work for the general good, also, or
you’ll find it unsatisfying.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 21 - Jan. 18)
Capricorns see the need for change; they
just aren’t sure this is the right change.
Friction between yourself and change-minded
associates is a constant; the threat of destructive
confrontation ever present. The stars strongly
recommend that you give family, friends and
subordinates the benefit of the doubt. You’ll be
able to live with what they come up with; a lot of
it will meet your own highest standards. You’ll
gain respect as part of a team seeking constructive
reform, principles and reputation in tact.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 19 - Feb. 17) The
issue you’re facing has serious real world
consequences for yourself and others. Too
much about it troubles and annoys you, making
detached consideration impossible. Even if you
could be objective, it’s too complicated. It defies
rational analysis and frustrates intuitive insight.
You can’t just stand by and let it resolve itself; the
chances of a screw up are too great. Meanwhile,
the clock is ticking. Engage those involved in an
informal, relaxed setting. Leave seriousness at the
door. A playful approach will yield breakthroughs.
PISCES (Feb. 18 - March 19) Your
conscience and your intuition are aligned
and free of outside interference. You know
the right way to go. You give reliable voice to
everyone’s innermost thoughts about the situation.
You can speak calmly and confidently in a noisy
debate; others find your words compelling. That
much is easy. The problem is, you don’t have much
leverage over anyone’s situation. The hard part
is making a solid connection between the ideals
you espouse and the realities people face. This
connection is the secret ingredient.
ARIES (March 20 - April 18) You’ll have
to jump in with both feet to keep your plans
for the future on course. You can benefit a lot
from the second-guessing sparked by mention of your
ambitions, but only to a point. Your strength comes
from firsthand knowledge of the immense pressures
at work. You know in your gut which ideas will
withstand these forces and which won’t. The stakes
are high. Don’t sign off on anything unless it passes
your reality test. And don’t let anyone seize the reins.
—DR. STAR
May 1-15 2013 | Little Village
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